PRESIDENT MARY McAleese extended a formal invitation to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to visit Ireland when she met him at the Kremlin yesterday.
She was the first Irish president to meet a Russian president at the Kremlin. While the late president Dr Patrick Hillery visited Moscow for the funerals of Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, an Irish president has never had a bilateral visit in Russia.
Mr Medvedev noted the significance of the event when he welcomed her to the Kremlin.
He said the meeting was “a milestone event” in the history of the relationship between the two countries since they first established diplomatic relations in 1973. He said Mrs McAleese was on a “fully fledged” State visit and he hoped her visit would be “interesting and fruitful”.
The two heads of state held a half-hour meeting which was described as wide-ranging and friendly. Mr Medvedev then hosted lunch for Mrs McAleese and her delegation.
Mrs McAleese said she was pleased to extend the invitation to Mr Medvedev and his wife Svetlana to come to Ireland, “and he was very taken with the idea”.
“I think we managed to persuade him that hurling and Gaelic football was well worth seeing and we suggested he might time his visit to coincide with a game of either hurling or Gaelic football. He wants us to send him the DVDs of both games because we explained at a little bit of length and detail our national sport, particularly in the context of our forthcoming game between Ireland and Russia,” she said.
“He did ask me, however, if I’d be rooting for his team on October 8th. I’m afraid I had to tell him that no, I wouldn’t be.”
Mrs McAleese said Mr Medvedev was “anxious to put on the agenda . . . our shared willingness to develop the potential in the good relationship that exists between us. At a political level we have a very good relationship. At an economic level the relationship is growing.”
She said the president noted that Ireland had considerable strengths that were of great interest to the economy in Russia.
“The president spoke at some length about Ireland’s confidence and its high level of recognition and success in the fields of ICT and high technology,” she said.
“He spoke very warmly about our smart economy, about the large number of multinationals associated with telecommunications and the whole field of new technologies.”
She said it was now our job to get out and sell Ireland in countries such as Russia, which were recovering from the global crisis quicker than other countries.
Asked about concerns about the future of adoptions in Russia, Mrs McAleese said the matter had not been raised in Moscow but she was aware of the concerns. The Hague Convention, which comes into effect in November, means that Irish people will not be able to adopt from countries such as Russia, which are not Hague signatories, unless the countries have a bilateral agreement with Ireland.
Mrs McAleese said the Department of Health was having discussions with Russia about a bilateral agreement. She said this was a painful issue for some people but “they should be reassured there are many people who are very well aware of these issues and who are currently working on them”.
The President left Moscow yesterday afternoon for St Petersburg. On arrival she visited the memorial to the siege of Leningrad and placed flowers at the site which commemorates the 900-day siege of Leningrad during the second World War.