Poland agreed on Wednesday to allow talks between the European Union and Russia on energy cooperation in a first sign of a possible thaw in its freeze on ties between Brussels and Moscow, diplomats said, according to Reuters. Warsaw last month vetoed the launch of negotiations for a new overarching EU-Russia strategic partnership agreement at a summit with President Vladimir Putin in protest at a year-old Russian ban on imports of meat from Poland. That negotiating mandate remains on ice but the Poles have announced they will allow a meeting of the EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on energy, which they were also blocking, to take place on Friday after all, the diplomats said. "They have given their agreement for the meeting to take place," one EU diplomat said. "It's a sign of a thaw in the Poles' position," one EU envoy said. But another said: "It does not necessarily have any relation with anything bigger." EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou is likely to visit Moscow this month to try to convince the Russian authorities to lift the ban on Polish meat and avert a threatened wider ban on EU meat, his spokesman Philip Tod said. The visit, which an official said could take place on Dec. 18, would also be meant to reassure Russia that EU food exports will be safe after Bulgaria and Romania join the bloc in 2007. Russia has threatened to ban all imports of meat from the EU from Jan. 1, saying it was not certain that exports from the two Balkan countries met all food safety standards. BILATERAL EU trade chief Peter Mandelson said he hoped the matter could be "resolved quickly and intensively before Jan. 1" with the "full involvement" of the EU Commission. However, although Russia will discuss its concerns over Romania and Bulgaria with the EU executive, Russia's ambassador to the EU hinted at a meeting with Kyprianou on Tuesday that Moscow's problems with Warsaw were strictly a bilateral matter. "The Russians are concerned that it will be a case of two against one in the room," the official said. "But the Commissioner is proposing that any trilateral talks can be done in a more flexible manner." Current EU president Finland has said it hopes to overcome the Polish obstruction of the partnership negotiations before its six-month term expires at the end of this month. It was not clear whether the Polish shift was a result of a three-way summit between President Lech Kaczynski, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday in the German town of Mettlach. The French and German leaders voiced understanding with Poland over the meat dispute but pressed it not to hold up the negotiations with Russia, a crucial energy supplier for the EU. Russia's animal and plant health watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, could not immediately be reached for comment. Last week its head, Sergei Dankvert, said Russia was ready to discuss lifting the meat ban from Poland directly if Warsaw provided sufficient proof of the safety of its products. Dankvert also said Russia would physically be unable to sort out with the European Union meat and plant safety problems arising from the accession of Romania and Bulgaria from Jan. 1, and would therefore be forced to cut some EU imports.
