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Putin targets deals worth $10b on Libya trip

Reuters
Published: April 17, 2008, 00:16

Tripoli: Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to oversee the signing of deals worth over $10 billion (about Dh36.5 billion) on a trip to Libya aimed at grabbing a slice of a market opening to the world after years of sanctions, his spokesman said.

Putin, who quits on May 7 to become a prime minister to his loyal successor Dmitry Medvedev, was to start a two-day visit to the Opec member yesterday. It is the first visit by a Kremlin leader since 1985.

"The main point of the visit is to compensate for losses our bilateral relations suffered during the sanctions, which we observed strictly in contrast with some Western competitors," a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

The former outcast state, whose oil and gas riches earned it more than $40 billion in 2007, is now aggressively courted by Western companies seeking contracts from big state infrastructure projects aimed at modernising Libya's rundown public services.

Visits to Tripoli last year by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Nicolas Sarkozy and a 2004 trip by then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder were crowned with large contracts for their countries' respective companies.

Putin was to hold talks with Gaddafi yesterday and today and oversee the signing of a political declaration and an accord on investment guarantees, according to the Russian officials. Russia, Libya's traditional supplier of armaments, is also eyeing more defence sales.