Russian President Vladimir Putin started to build his relations with French President Jacques Chirac significantly later than with other Western leaders. Their first substantive meeting took place only last October in Paris. Russian newspapers note that Chirac's current visit to Russia has helped the two Presidents to make up for the past. Agreements and understanding which Putin and Chirac reached in some areas may even go father than those that Putin had achieved with his other foreign colleagues.
Izvestia writes that during their talks in the Kremlin the Russian and French Presidents recalled what General Charles de Gaulle once said of Europe: that it should stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals. The Russian side believes that de Gaulle's approach should be adopted as an underlying principle in Europe's future.
However, the strongest impression was produced by the two leaders' statements on the 1972 ABM Treaty. The two presidents expressed their countries' stands on this issue more clearly. Given the fact that none of the sides had given any promises before the visit, they issued a joint statement on strategic stability that can, beyond any doubt, be regarded as the summit's chief outcome. Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes that Russia has managed to enlist France's support in retaining the 1972 ABM Treaty.
Russian journalists believe that Russia has successfully achieved one of its key tasks: President Putin got support for his idea to establish a new military-technological parity in retaliation to America's NMD plans.
"It looks as if Moscow didn't miscalculate when it spoke about a convergence of views on key issues. In fact, it staked a lot on Chirac's "conservatism" who, as the leader of a nuclear power, has often spoken against US plans to deploy its NMD," Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.
For its part, Kommersant notes
<http://www.therussianissues.com/stories/2001/07/03/994153171/994153378.html
> that the two presidents discovered that they held the same views on key
international security issues. The joint statement on strategic stability
which Putin and Chirac issued yesterday said that Russia and France, which
are permanent members of the UN Security Council, sought "to ensure a
strategic parity in the world in the new conditions that have taken shape
after the Cold War." These words are a more than obvious hint at US
President George Bush and his plans to upset this parity by building the US
national missile defense system.
Translation(full): Marina Philippova , Strana.Ru