February 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 2,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 3: Pakistan is hoping to secure at least four agreements with Russia on trade, energy exploration and diplomatic cooperation during President Pervez Musharraf’s landmark visit to Moscow this week, a foreign ministry official said Monday.

“The memorandums of understanding are yet to be finalized but we expect that we would arrive at some sort of agreement on them,” the official told AFP.

One MoU was likely to establish exchanges of trainee diplomats, he said.

Musharraf heads Tuesday to Russia for a three-day visit, the first by a Pakistani president since the late 1970s. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited in 1999.

Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokar, who spent more than a week in Moscow in January laying the ground for Musharraf’s landmark trip, identified oil and gas and trade as possible focuses of the MoUs.

“We are very much interested in meeting Russian entrepreneurs who can invest in the oil and gas sector and open new fields,” he said in a briefing on the eve of Musharraf’s departure.

Pakistan was eager to inject life into limp trade with Russia, which stood at a modest 100 million dollars in 2002.

“That too is heavily in favour of Russia,” Khokar said.

“Pakistan needs to increase its exports as the private sector in Russia is now opening up and tremendous potential exists for Pakistani entrepreneurs.”

Russian businessmen would also be asked to help expand and modernise Pakistan Steel Mills — the country’s largest source of manufactured steel goods — which Russia helped establish during what Khokar called the “golden period” of Islamabad-Moscow cooperation between 1966 and 1970.

Officials in Moscow said at the weekend that Russia was hoping for cooperation in aerospace, in particular the launch of Pakistani satellites aboard Russian rockets.

He is scheduled to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday and address Russian businessmen that night.

Terrorism, Pakistan’s decades-old dispute with India over Kashmir, nuclear security, and arms supplies were expected to top the agenda of talks. —AFP