RUSSIA: JACQUES CHIRAC & HELMUT KOHL ARRIVE FOR INFORMAL SUMMIT

(26 Mar 1998) Natural Sound
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl are in Moscow for Thursday's informal summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
The three leaders are expected to discuss the crises in Iraq and Kosovo, European
security in the next century and economic and humanitarian cooperation.
Yeltsin is also expected to brief his guests on his ousting of the entire Russian government earlier this week.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl was the first to arrive for the informal summit with Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Jacques Chirac.
Kohl and the French president will be the first Western leaders to meet Yeltsin since
he recovered from a respiratory infection and then unexpectedly sacked his cabinet.
They will also have the chance to get to know acting prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko.
The little-known former energy minister headed the welcoming party for Kohl and Chirac, who arrived moments after the German chancellor had landed.
Kiriyenko took his guests to Bor, a presidential retreat 48 kilometres (30 miles) south
of Moscow, where the talks, a luncheon and a woodland walk are scheduled on Thursday.
The summit had been scheduled for a town in the Urals, Yeltsin's birthplace and former political stronghold.
It was to include a symbolic trip to the line marking the geographical border between Asia and Europe.
But the talks were switched to the Moscow area at the last minute when Yeltsin's doctors advised him not to travel following his recent illness.
The summit of the so-called Big European Troika is supposed to mark Russia's stronger links to Europe.
But the meeting risks being overshadowed by the latest political upheavals in Moscow in the wake of Yeltsin's comprehensive government reshuffle.

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