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FRADKOV ON RELATIONS WITH GOVERNMENT MEMBERS

MOSCOW, August 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said he has no personal contacts with government members.

"There is no personal factor here for sure. I have even relations with everyone; it would be surprising if it were not so," the premier told journalists on Friday.

Mr. Fradkov called Russian Economic Development Minister German Gref a very talented person. "Gref is an emotional and very talented person," he said.

"Gref realized that it's necessary to change the quality of the economic policy, work with regions. He is one of the locomotives of this process and maybe one of the pioneers," said the prime minister.

As for the Finance Minister, Mr. Fradkov said that Aleksei Kudrin "also has a creative thinking."

At a government session on August 19, an argument started between Mr. Fradkov on the one part and Mr. Kudrin and Mr. Gref on the other part, in regard to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's forecast of the GDP growth in 2005, which was not too ambitious, in the premier's opinion.

Answering the prime minister's question whether it was possible to forecast the GDP growth in 2005 at 7.5%, the Finance Minister voiced the impossibility to forecast high rates of GDP growth without reforming the energy and gas industries, transport and the communal and housing services.

The premier said that he is ready to conduct these reforms but they have to be "sensible, and not reforms for the sake of reforms."

"We are unlikely to reach the rates above 6%," Mr. Gref told journalists after a government session.

The premier also told journalists that he will make ministers work at full capacity.

"I will strain the situation and exert all forces to create this tension," he said. In this way he commented on the situation with high oil prices, when the Finance Ministry has a considerable financial resource at its disposal.

"I will make them work as if there were no such resource," Mr. Fradkov promised. "I will find simple and easy-to-understand expressions to make the ministers work at full capacity."

The premier said that a series of government session will be held, which will consider "informative issues on branch ministries."

He stressed the role of the Finance Ministry. "The Finance Ministry has a vast responsibility. Now that the branch ministries have not started working yet, the Finance Ministry, which has resources and technologies of work with resources at its disposal, covers this space. This is today. The ministers are hostages to the resources the Finance Ministry allocates," said Mr. Fradkov.

Speaking about the role of the Economic Development Ministry, the prime minister said that one of the main tasks of Minister German Gref is "to create tension with ministers."