POLAND: Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen held crisis talks with Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski last night aimed at salvaging next Friday's EU-Russia summit.
The summit, which was intended as a centrepiece of Finland's six-month tenure as EU president, was to showcase the start of talks on a comprehensive new strategic partnership agreement between the EU and Russia.
However, Warsaw is threatening to veto the opening of negotiations over disagreements with Moscow over its ban on Polish meat exports and Russia's failure to liberalise its gas pipeline infrastructure.
A few hours ahead of yesterday's emergency talks in Warsaw, Poland signalled it might be ready to compromise on the issue, which has left it isolated among its 24 EU partners.
"I think we will find a solution which will also be acceptable for us," said Mr Kaczynski, whose government has consistently urged Brussels and EU member states to take a tougher line with Russia on a range of sensitive issues, but particularly energy.
Russia banned imports of Polish meat and some other foods last year after finding some veterinary certificates had been forged. But Warsaw has accused Russia of playing politics over the export ban.
Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told The Irish Times yesterday this was not the case, citing cases of Indian buffalo meat being falsely labelled as Polish meat. But when asked about Moscow's relationship with Poland, he also signalled that Russia may soon consider lifting its ban on Polish foodstuffs.
"I wouldn't try to pretend that the relationship is a rosy one at the moment, but none of the difficulties are insurmountable," said Mr Chizhov. He said Moscow would lift the ban when it had verified Poland had corrected deficiencies in its export processes.
The European Commission is sending its own experts to verify that Polish food exports meet EU standards in an attempt to persuade Moscow to lift its ban. In July, commission experts found some irregularities in food transit controls.
The proposed new strategic partnership agreement will cover everything from human rights to energy to trade. The EU hopes it can be used as a tool to persuade Moscow to liberalise its gas and oil pipeline infrastructure to offer better security of supply of energy to member states.
Europe relies on Russia for more than a quarter of its energy supplies and fears have grown that Moscow is ready to use these supplies to extract political concessions from customers.