Beijing, Sept 3 (CTK special correspondent) – Czech President Milos Zeman yesterday called on Russia to join the international effort to stop terrorism of Islamic State when he met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Beijing where they are attending the celebrations of the end of World War Two in Asia.
Putin expressed the hope that Russian-Czech trade exchange, now affected by sanctions, would improve.
He praised Zeman’s attitude to the evaluation of the war past.
“We highly praise your position on the objective evaluation of recent history, the time of war,” Putin said.
Zeman met Putin for a second time this year. In May, he conducted talks with him in Moscow on the occasion of the celebrations of the end of World War Two in europe.
The existing problems must be dealt with by “a joint effort without rejecting and leaving one another,” Putin said. “I fully share this position of yours,” he added.
Zeman spoke about the need to face Islamic State’s terrorism by the creation of international forces. He asked Putin to join the effort.
Speaking in Russian, Zeman said he wanted to discuss the issue at the forthcoming meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. Putin, too, will deliver a speech there.
“I want to discuss the issue there. Besides, it was already mentioned by (Russian Foreign Minister Sergey) Lavrov,” Zeman said.
“A unanimous resolution of the Security Council must be passed, similar to that passed in reaction to the terrorist attacks in Somalia,” he added.
Zeman said the anti-terrorist forces should not focus on the occupation of any territory, which the Untied States has done, but on the extremists’ training camps and their leaders.
Putin’s foreign political leader Yuri Ushakov said the aim of Putin and Zeman’s meeting yesterday was to assess the state of the two countries’ relations in the trade, business, investment, energy, cultural and humanitarian fields. A Russia-EU dialogue was also taken up, he said.
“Russian-Czech relations have already had a partnership character, developing with quite dynamically until recently,” Ushakov told the Russian TASS news agency.
He said the Kremlin registers a strengthening of contacts between Russian and Czech regions, good prospects of cultural and humanitarian cooperation and development of relations between universities.
Ushakov said interest in the study of Russian is growing in the Czech Republic
However, the volume of bilateral trade has been decreasing, TASS reported. It dropped by 11 percent to ten billion dollars in consequence of the western sanctions last year and by more than 40 percent in the first half of the year compared with the same period of 2014.
