NIZHNY NOVGOROD: Russia Friday agreed to lift its import ban on EU vegetables imposed in the wake of the E.coli outbreak that provoked a bitter trade row between Moscow and Brussels. After two days of summit talks, EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and Russian President Dmitry Mededev both said Moscow would lift the ban although it was unclear if this would happen in the next two days. “We are happy that we have agreed the ban on vegetables from the European Union will be lifted,” Barroso said at a joint news conference with Medvedev in the central Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod. Without giving a specific time frame for the lifting of the ban, he said that the European Union would send certificates to Russia within the next two days to get the procedure underway. Medvedev confirmed Russia's willingness to lift the ban, saying sanitary experts from the two sides would have to shortly agree on subsequent moves. “We discussed a mechanism of resuming supplies of European vegetables to the Russian market,” Medvedev said. “We are ready to resume such supplies against guarantees from competent services of the European Union. This is absolutely certain.” Specialists from Russia and the EU will in the near future have to agree on the certificates that will confirm that vegetables headed for Russia are safe, he added. In a change from earlier statements, Barroso said that a new system of certification of vegetable safety in the European Union would be be “put in place without any delay.” Russia's chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko, head of the consumer protection watchdog that imposed the ban, declined to confirm that it would be lifted within the next two days. “The ball is in their (the EU) court so everything will depend on how hard they try,” he told reporters afterwards. – Agence France
