Besprekingen EU-Rusland verlopen moeizaam (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU leaders will on Friday (24 November) limp to Finland for a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin without a mandate to start talks on a new EU-Russia treaty, but with plenty of thorny problems on the agenda such as Russian food trade bans, human rights, Iran and Georgia.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso i has personally promised Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski he will "put pressure" on the Russian leader to end the now famous ban on Polish meat exports, with Mr Putin not known for responding well to public pressure.

"Poland should not defend the interests of conmen involved in smuggling, which harms local producers," the Russian leader said after arriving in Helsinki on Thursday night, newswires report, blaming "sluggish" Polish authorities for "failing" to regulate their food export sector.

Russian food chief Sergei Dankvert added that Moscow will not lift the Polish embargo until it has cleared up other worries that dodgy pork from Romania and Bulgaria could enter the EU chain next year, with Russia now threatening to ban all EU meat exports from January.

Internally, the EU is wondering if it should blame Warsaw, Brussels or the Finnish EU presidency for Poland upholding its veto on the EU-Russia treaty talks, but the row has also spotlighted Mr Putin's use of trade as a political instrument to divide and weaken rivals.

Human rights, Middle East, Georgia

Meanwhile, Russian dissident Aleksander Litivinenko died in London last night after - most analysts say - being poisoned by Russian agents to stop his investigation into the murder of anti-Kremlin reporter Anna Politkovskaya.

But neither London nor Brussels have issued any statements on Mr Litivinenko so far, while the Kremlin plies a new ideology of "sovereign democracy" that describes any human rights criticism from the west as interference in the Russian state.

NGO Human Rights Watch has urged Europe to press Mr Putin on torture and extra-judicial killings in Chechnya, with the group's Europe director Holly Cartner saying "for too long, the EU has put energy security above human rights in Russia."

On the Middle East, EU diplomats stress Moscow's constructive role in the so-called "quartet" of the EU, Russia, the US and the UN handling the Palestinian problem.

But Russia continues to block US and EU efforts to impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear project, while its wider role in the region - including reports of Russian arms supplies to Syria that end up in the hands of Hezbollah - has also been questioned.

"The growing conflict in the Middle East is of Russia's economic and geopolitical interest, in terms of petrodollar income [driving oil and gas prices high]," former Lithuanian president Vytautis Landsbergis told EUobserver earlier this year.

The EU in Helsinki will also ask Russia - again - to lift economic sanctions on Georgia and to stop deportations, but with Moscow keen to pile pressure on Tbilisi to derail progress on NATO membership at a 27 November NATO summit in Riga, a quick result is unlikely.

Northern Dimension could save face

"Even if it was not possible for a formal decision on launching negotiations to be taken at the [EU-Russia Helsinki] summit, this would not make the summit a failure," Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomjoia wrote in his blog earlier this week.

"We can be satisfied that...the parties will sign a new Northern Dimension Framework Document and a joint political declaration" on dealing with environmental, cultural and social issues in the Barents and Baltic sea zones, he added.

But aside from the routine summit smiles and handshakes set to appear in the media over the weekend, it is hard to say the summit is geared up for any breakthroughs on the big topics.

Finland and Germany see their back-to-back EU presidencies and Mr Putin's scheduled departure from power in 2008 as a "window of opportunity" for a new era in EU-Russia relations that would see Russia "welcome" in Europe as it adopts European market economy and open society values.

But so far the Finnish presidency has seen EU-Russia tensions increase, the EU is stuck with an out-of-date bilateral treaty and Russia is slipping - western analysts say - into ever deeper authoritarianism reminiscent of the pre-Yeltsin era.