Obama Backs Deeper Ties Under US-Russian Commission
WASHINGTON, December 27 (RIA Novosti) – The White House on Friday called for closer cooperation with Russia on issues such as arms control, counterterrorism and trade under the auspices of a bilateral presidential commission launched four years ago.
US President Barack Obama “encourages the commission’s working groups to deepen and expand their engagement with Russia in order to remove barriers to trade and investment, increase security, and ensure that advances in science and innovation continue,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.
The statement came as Washington and Moscow issued a joint report Friday on the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, an initiative created in 2009 by Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to facilitate high-level talks on a broad range of issues.
The report, which praised the efforts of the two countries to “strengthen and expand cooperation,” covers the period from May 2012 to December 2013 that has seen a deterioration in US-Russian ties, primarily over human rights issues.
In the report, however, officials focused on areas they described as fertile for collaboration, including military-technical cooperation and counterterrorism in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing in April, which US authorities say was carried out by two brothers with ties to Russia’s mainly Muslim North Caucasus region.
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http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131228/186000455/Obama-Backs-Deeper-Ties-Under-US-Russian-Commission.html
