Russian Foreign Minister to start tour of Latin American countries

MOSCOW, August 21 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
starts a tour of Latin American countries Sunday.
His five-day trip will embrace El Salvador, Peru and Venezuela.
The main task, which Moscow sets for itself in relations with these
countries is "to bolster political dialogue with a developed system of
trade and economic relations".
Russian diplomats indicate that the experts who have started speaking
about a "decade of Latin America" have a good reason to do so, since the
region is second only to Asia as regards the rates of economic development.
Interests towards cooperation with Latin American nations is shown by
Russia's major corporations, including the energy sector giants like
Gazprom, LUKOIL and Inter RAO UES.
According to Alexander Lukashevich, an official spokesman for the
Russian Foreign Ministry, the signing of a document on the fundamentals of
relations between the two countries will be the highlight of Lavrov's
talks in El Salvador.
"The agreement will lay a solid foundation for variegated bilateral
cooperation and the two countries' short-term plans suggest the signing of
a range of other documents to expand the legislative basis," Lukashevich
said.
The talks in Peru will focus on the ways of raising the volumes of
bilateral trade to a level matching the economic capability of the two
nations.
"Considering the fact that both Russia and Peru are participants in
the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum /APEC/ and hence a discussions
of the ways for increasing collaboration within APEC will be one of the
items on the agenda of discussions," Lukashevich said.
In Venezuela, Lavrov and his hosts are expected to consider the
implementation of a joint plan for the development of Russian-Venezuelan
partnership through to 2014.
Lukashevich said in this connection that Russia and Venezuela have
already established diversified cooperation and the Russian side is
satisfied with the pace of action under quite a number of projects,
especially the ones in the energy sector, construction of accessible
social housing and manufacturing of defense technologies.
"Our collaboration has fair prospects in car manufacturing,
agriculture and fisheries," Lukashevich said.
He mentioned the problem of alleged militarization of Latin America
and the Caribbean and the supplies of Russian weaponry to the region --
primarily to Venezuela - in this context.
"Defense spending in Latin American countries doesn't exceed 1.5% of
their combined GDP on the average," Lukashevich said.
Among the regional countries, Venezuela, which spends a rather modest
1.1% of the GDP for defense, is not the biggest spender for the purpose.
Columbia's spending for these purposes reaches 4.0% of the GDP and Chile'
s, 3.4%.