Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, on Monday came away empty-handed after “very frank” talks with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, over the treatment of foreign staff working in the $38bn (£19bn, €24bn) TNK-BP joint oil venture.
Mr Brown was also given short shrift by Mr Medvedev in their first meeting after he tackled two other issues which have dogged British relations with Russia: the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the closure of two British Council offices.
Mr Medvedev was in no mood to give ground in the hour-long talks, believing that Mr Brown had deliberately soured the atmosphere by raising the issues, instead of looking exclusively to the future. Russian diplomats were also furious at reports in the British press last week which suggested London was awash with Russian spies. Moscow believes the leak came from MI5, the British security service.
Sergey Prikhodko, an aide to the president, said there were “frank discussions and they did not avoid any sharp discussions in the political or humanitarian sphere”.
Mr Brown was determined to take up the case of the troubled TNK-BP oil venture, amid claims that BP’s Russian billionaire partners may have orchestrated visa problems for foreign managers as part of an attempt to win control of the company. The Russian shareholders deny these claims.
Mr Brown’s spokesman agreed the talks were frank but denied there had been any row. He said Mr Medvedev had repeated his view that “it was not for him to get involved” and that the visa dispute was an administrative issue.
Russian officials said last week they would speed the renewal of visas, but BP has warned that half of its staff would still have to leave the country.
Mr Brown’s spokesman said the talks were “constructive” and that the two leaders had spent only half the meeting talking about the three issues which were blighting relations. They also discussed energy prices and the economy.
Mr Medvedev, who wants British-Russian relations to be “normalised”, refused to give any ground on requests by London for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent suspected of murdering Mr Litvinenko.
The controversy deepened last night when the BBC reported that unnamed UK government officials had said Litvinenko’s murder was carried out with the backing of the Russian state. In a separate development, BBC’s Newsnight said it had also learned that MI5 officers believed they thwarted an attempt last summer to kill Boris Berezovsky, a high-profile Russian dissident and oligarch living in Britain.
Mr Brown also appeared to make little progress in persuading Moscow to allow the reopening of British Council offices in St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg. Mr Medvedev’s aides insist the reopening is an administrative matter.
By contrast Mr Prikhodko described a meeting between Mr Medvedev and President George W. Bush as “friendly, constructive and open”. Mr Medvedev said Moscow and Washington needed to keep up dialogue despite failing to overcome differences on US missile defence plans in Europe, a big irritant in ties.
“There are certain questions on our agenda where we agree, and these are the matters pertaining to Iran and North Korea,” he said.
Mr Bush said Mr Medvedev was “very comfortable, he’s confident, and that I believe that when he tells me something, he means it.”
Additional reporting by Catherine Belton in Moscow
