OREANDA-NEWS. September 12, 2011. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks on September 9 in Moscow with Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, who was on a working visit to Russia.

The heads of the foreign affairs agencies gave high marks to the current state of Russian-Finnish good-neighborly cooperation and compared approaches to the prospects for its further development.

Considerable attention was devoted to the development of the strategic partnership between Russia and the EU, including making progress towards visa-free travel for citizens.
The ministers thoroughly discussed themes of interaction between Russia and Finland in the framework of the international regional structures in the Baltic Sea region and Northern Europe as a whole, along with multilateral cooperation in the Arctic.

An exchange of views took place on topical issues in international politics, including strengthening the UN’s role in world affairs, primarily in crisis settlement, and on ways of normalizing the situation in North Africa and the Middle East.