Medvedev to attend Yaroslavl int'l conference on his 44th birthday.

MOSCOW, September 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
will arrive in Yaroslavl on Monday to attend an international conference
entitled "Modern State and Global Security". This forum will be held in
Russia for the first time and the Kremlin hopes that it will become
traditional.

"This is a good and useful conference," presidential aide Sergei
Prikhodko said. "For some period of time we were going to conferences in
other countries. But representative conferences in Russia have turned into
a steady tendency for the last few years. For instance, one of them is the
Petersburg Economic Forum," he recalled.
"It is very important that not only businesspeople will go to
Yaroslavl just out of practical considerations to conclude contracts
thanks to new contacts with government officials, but also political
scientists and people for a real discussion will arrive." "They consider
us as a serious and very interesting companion in a broad sense of the
word and are ready to speak with us about global serious issues - not only
about human rights or Georgia, but about other serious issues,
particularly Russia's possible contribution in shaping global security and
forming the intellectual background of cooperation," the Kremlin official
said.
Prikhodko pledged that the presidential administration "will help in
every way for this forum to develop."
Prime Ministers of France and Spain Francois Fillon and Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero will attend the first Yaroslavl forum. The Russian
president will have bilateral meetings with them. After that the high
guests will deliver reports at the conference.
Medvedev reiterated about the way the modern state and global security
should be in his point of view. "We should be strong like our athletes.
But the strength is not only in this. It is common knowledge that the weak
are beaten. Those who do not have the head on the shoulders are beaten: We
should be strong, intelligent and modern: To be like this we should adapt
to the situation around us. We should match all global challenges of the
modern world. I believe that Russia will be able to cope with all
challenges our great country is facing," Medvedev said in February 2008.
After Georgia's aggression against South Ossetia in the previous year
the Russian president proposed, "Unfortunately, the recent events in the
Caucasus showed that the current global security system couldn't prevent
military adventures today. But we should do everything to create a modern
reliable architecture of this security for the future. To our mind, a new
approach, a new legally binding European Security Treaty should contribute
to the resolution of these tasks." Speaking at the world policy conference
in the French city of Evian on October 8, 2008, Medvedev put forward for
the first time five principles of a new European Security Treaty proposed
by Moscow. "It is important to stipulate in the Treaty that neither a
country nor an international organisation can have the exclusive rights to
maintain peace and stability in Europe," Medvedev noted.
The Russian leader is also not satisfied with the modern financial
architecture, "It is absolutely obvious that the current system fulfills
no tasks to keep the international financial system balanced and does not
guarantee us from a country taking a decision that will not affect
international financial ties as the chain reaction in the future."
On Monday, in Yaroslavl ahead of a G20 summit in the U.S. city of
Pittsburgh Medvedev will have an opportunity to address these issues again.
The conference will have four workshops - "Social responsibility of
the modern state as the factor of global stability", "Modern state: the
diversity of democratic experience", "Interstate cooperation and the
effectiveness of global institutions" and "Modern state against terrorism,
separatism and xenophobia". The Public Planning Institute, the Institute
of Modern Development and the Yaroslavl State University, which organized
the forum, hope that the discussions will be practical, rather than
scientific. The participants will discuss the way a modern democratic
society should become, how to make the world safer and how to pursue a
responsible social policy.
The conference will focus on the aftermath of the world economic
crisis. It is not accidentally that the second day of the conference falls
on the first anniversary of the Black Monday, which shocked the world on
September 15, 2008. On that day the U.S. fourth largest bank Lehman
Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Bank of America took over the major U.S.
investment bank Merrill Lynch. Asian and European stock markets plunged in
the wake of the credit crunch in the United States. All countries started
taking urgent anti-crisis measures.
The Yaroslavl conference aims at the future monitoring: how to build a
new post-crisis world, what procedures should be formed to create new
international institutions, what democratic standards of modern statehood
should be set and how many democratic models can exist in the world.
More than 500 politicians, economists and scientists from 18 countries
will attend the Yaroslavl forum. Approximately the same number of
journalists will cover the forum. Former Italian Prime Minister Romano
Prodi and former NATO Secretary General George Robertson, head of the
Kremlin administration Sergei Naryshkin and his deputy Vladislav Surkov,
speakers of both houses of Russian parliament Sergei Mironov and Boris
Gryzlov, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, chief regional officials,
representatives of the business circles and political parties will
participate in the conference.
This Monday also falls on another remarkable event - the birthday of
Dmitry Medvedev. The Russian president will turn 44. "After this (the
participation in the conference - Itar-Tass) I hope the president will
have a free evening to celebrate his birthday at a warm party," press
secretary of the Russian president Natalia Timakova said.
-0-baz