I remember my very first encounter with Japan. At that time, I was Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Out of nowhere, Japan's Consul General in St Petersburg came to my office and said Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs wanted to invite me to Japan. I was very surprised because I had nothing to do with Japan except being a judoka. This was an opportunity to visit Tokyo and a couple of other cities. And, you know, a capital is a capital everywhere: there is the official script and certain protocol. It is always easier to talk in the provinces, the conversation is more natural.

We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today's complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.

We would like to see science and higher education developing here [on the Russian Far East], so that it could become one of the major research centres in the entire APR system. Undoubtedly a lot remains to be done here, but given the labour market demand, the relevance of such a university is undeniable.

We had a very good situation in 2005. The common budget had a volume of 80 billion dollars per year. Thousands of jobs were created in Germany by Russian investments. At the same time, a large number of German companies invested in Russia. There were countless cultural and social contacts.

The European Union's enlargement is part of the natural process of integration and globalisation that is underway in the world today.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

There is another domain that we consider relevant and having good prospects - marine biology. For many years this region [Russian Far East] has been home for one of the leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Marine Biology.