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Blair seeks to build contact with Putin

LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair travels to St Petersburg on Friday on a mission to get to know the man widely expected to win Russia's presidential election.

Blair will be the first Western head of government to go to Russia to meet Acting President Vladimir Putin since the former spy took over in the Kremlin at the start of the year.

"The prime minister's key objective is to build a personal relationship with Putin and assess for himself where Putin is coming from and what he wants to achieve," a spokesman for Blair said.

Blair is due to arrive in St Petersburg, Putin's home city, late on Friday and hold talks with him on Saturday.

Despite concern over Russia's campaign in Chechnya, which the West has criticised for being excessively brutal, British officials say they are determined to deepen contacts with Moscow.

"Russia is too important a country to ignore or isolate over Chechnya," Blair's spokesman said, echoing the sentiments of most Western nations who are anxious not to alienate Putin.

"We need to engage. This opportunity should not be turned down," the spokesman said.

Blair's trip follows a visit to Moscow last month by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who praised Putin as a "refreshingly open" man who would push economic reforms and build better relations with the West.

Several other Western foreign ministers have been to Moscow to size up Putin, but no Western heads of state or heads of government have made the trip this year.

Putin, who faces an election on March 26, has not travelled abroad since taking office in the Kremlin after Boris Yeltsin resigned on New Year's Eve.

On Sunday, in a rare foreign television interview, Putin said he could not envisage his country becoming isolated from Europe and said Russia had "no aim of cornering the Chechen people, of chasing them into a cave".

But Putin, whose popularity in Russia stems in part on his tough line against Chechnya, repeated Russia's insistence that it was acting against "extremists" who had turned the province into a "mini-Afghanistan".

British officials insist Blair will still make clear Britain's concerns over Chechnya and stress that the crisis cannot be solved by force without a political process.

"The use of force has to be proportionate to the threat. We will raise concerns about human rights in Chechnya -- but it is part of the strategy to continue talking to Russia," one said.

Blair's agenda will also include the Balkans, organised crime and the forthcoming G8 summit of the leading industrialised nations and Russia.

Britain wants to strengthen cooperation with Russian forces contributing to peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. It also wants to discuss economic ties and greater coordination of criminal investigation bodies.

"Because there hasn't been as close a relationship as we would have liked, there's a lot to be done," the spokesman said.

Blair and his wife, Cherie, will attend a performance of Sergei Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace" at the renowned Mariinsky Theatre, still known in the West by its Soviet-era name, the Kirov.-Reuters