The participants expressed anxiety about the problems the Defense Ministry had been meeting in realizing its plans for future development.

We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade.

We are expanding and improving the infrastructure of our relations. You must have heard about China's plans to participate in building a high-speed railway line between Moscow and Kazan in the Volga region, in central Russia. And then we plan to extend it to Kazakhstan and on to China.

Russia is probably one of the first countries to have been confronted with this problem of terrorism. It took some time before the international community realised the danger terrorism poses.

The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism.

Russian culture is multifaceted and diverse. So if you want to understand, to feel Russia, then of course you need to read books, Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol and others. Listen to music. Tchaikovsky. Watch our classical ballet. But the most important thing is that you need to talk with people.

The mutual sympathy of our peoples is and will remain the foundation of our relations [with Germany].