Lavrov begins working trips to Egypt and Uzbekistan.

MOSCOW, December 20 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov is beginning a three-day working trip on Sunday that will take him
to Egypt and Uzbekistan.

"During his stay in Cairo on December 20-21 the minister will be
received by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He will hold talks with
Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and will meet Amr Moussa, the
secretary-general of the League of Arab States," the Russian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told Itar-Tass.
"The talks will focus on Middle East problems, the Arab-Israeli
settlement in the first place," Nesterenko specified.
"The dynamics of events and the high activity of Russia and Egypt in
this direction make it imperative to constantly coordinate efforts aimed
at correcting the Palestinian-Israeli situation and unblocking the entire
peace process," he emphasized.
"Moscow highly appreciates the efforts of the Egyptian leadership to
liquidate a split in the Palestinian ranks," the Russian diplomat went on
to say.
"Great attention will be paid to promising projects of bilateral
cooperation in various spheres," Nesterenko said.
"Despite the world financial crisis the positive dynamics of the
Russian-Egyptian cooperation in the trade and economic sphere has been
preserved," he emphasized.
"Mutual trade turnover between our two countries stood at 2.06 billion
dollars in 2008 and considerable growth is expected in 2009," Nesterenko
emphasized.
He noted that cooperation in tourism kept growing. A total of 1.8
million Russians visited Egypt in 2008, and their number may reach 2
million in 2009.
Lavrov's visit to Tashkent on December 21-22 will pass in the context
of preparation for a Russian-Uzbek summit in Moscow early in 2010.
Sergei Lavrov will meet Uzbek President Islam Karimov and will hold
talks with Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov to discuss urgent problems of
Russian-Uzbek cooperation and interaction in the international arena,"
Nesterenko stressed. "The agenda also includes an exchange of views on
the sides' cooperation when Uzbekistan takes over the SCO presidency and
when Russia is going to preside over the CIS in 2010 as well as the
situation in Afghanistan," the diplomat said.
Other topics for discussion will include regional security and
stability and the two countries' interaction within the United Nations,
the OSCE, the CIS and the CSTO.
Special attention will be paid to economic cooperation. "Uzbekistan
is Russia's fourth major CIS trading partner after Ukraine, Belarus and
Kazakhstan," Nesterenko went on to say. He added that in January-October
2009 the reciprocal trade turnover between Russia and Uzbekistan was more
than two billion dollars.
A program of cooperation between the Foreign Ministries of Russia and
Uzbekistan for 2010 will be signed after the talks.

.200 evacuated from Perm puppet theatre as fire breaks out.

PERM, the Urals, December 20 (Itar-Tass) - Two hundred people were
evacuated from the Perm puppet theatre on Saturday as fire broke out on
the stage. Luckily, there were no casualties.
"A short circuit in the electric wiring set a stage curtain on fire in
the middle of the play. The theatre workers used fire extinguishers to
fight the blaze. They had suppressed it before the arrival of two fire
crews. The fire-fighters checked the building and helped to ventilate the
premises," Konstantin Sgorin, a press service representative for the
Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations branch for the Perm territory,
told Itar-Tass.
It's the second fire that broke out in a place of mass concentration
of people in Perm in December.
A fire in the popular Perm nightclub 'The Lame Horse' on December 5
claimed the lives of 149 people. Eighty patients, including 22 in critical
and 32 is serious condition, are still staying in hospitals in Perm,
Chelyabinsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Large-scale inspections took place in Perm after the nightclub
tragedy. Several nightclubs and cafes have been closed for breaches in
fire safety regulations.
Performances at the Perm theatre 'Near the Bridge' have been suspended
for two weeks.

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