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Moscow Times
July 13, 2004
Putin Tells Diplomats to Do PR for Russia
By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer

Russia's ambassadors must do more to promote the country's image abroad and help draw foreign investment from the United States and other Western countries, President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

Speaking to some 130 ambassadors summoned to Moscow for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, Putin urged them to improve Russia's profile abroad by "forming an unbiased, favorable image of domestic and foreign policy."

"The widest circle of American society must be interested in constructive and friendly relations with Russia. And this of course includes business," Putin said, news agencies reported.

"The way people view Russia in the countries where you are based is often far from reality. Planned campaigns to discredit the country -- of which the harm to the state and Russian business is obvious -- are not rare."

The gathering of the country's ambassadors was the second in two years. In July 2002, Putin made a similar criticism that the diplomatic corps was failing to improve foreigners' views of Russia.

In Monday's speech, Putin put a premium on improved ties with the expanded European Union and the United States.

Putin's call to touch up Russia's image is not surprising, observers said, given renewed uncertainties about the country's economic direction.

"The whole situation around Yukos left a very negative effect [on foreign investors] from the point of view of attracting new investments into Russia," said Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank, agreed that the damage from the legal assault on Yukos will be hard to repair.

The Prosecutor General's Office and the arbitrary nature of the court system have already done enough to damage Russia's image, Korgunyuk against Yukos major shareholders Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev.

"No diplomacy will be able to mend this harm," Korgunyuk said.

Putin also said that the diplomatic corps should help raise Russia's competitiveness and ease the country's integration into the global economic system.

"Unfortunately, until now Russian diplomacy has remained on the sidelines of pushing the real interests of Russian corporations abroad," Ryabov said.

"Meanwhile, as some Russian companies expand to the West, they would like to get the support of the diplomatic corps."

Besides reaching out to Russian companies, diplomats should also do more to improve ties with a more tightly integrated Europe.

"Such a dynamic situation ... enables us not only to latch on to the last carriage of a passing train but to have real influence in forming a new democratic world order," Putin said.

In achieving that aim, ambassadors should feel free to act more independently from Moscow, the president said.

Priorities include easing visa restrictions for Russian citizens traveling to the European Union and achieving the country's entry into the World Trade Organization, which depends to a large extent on talks with the United States.

"Relations with the United States require constant attention," Putin said, adding that his personal friendly relationship with President George W. Bush is not enough to build a full-fledged partnership.

"We have objective reasons to believe that we can establish a long-term partnership based on mutual respect for each other's interests, constructive dialogue and predictability."

Russia must also not lose sight of its leadership role in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Putin warned, lest it be taken away by more active states.

"What we should not do is get carried away by sentiments that no other state but Russia has a right to claim leadership in the CIS. This is an erroneous, illusory and disorienting approach," he said.