Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen travels to Warsaw on Friday hoping to persuade Poland to drop its objections to the launch of negotiations between the European Union and Russia on a cooperation pact.
Vanhanen is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and will return to Finland Friday night.
Russia and the European Union are to discuss the possibility of starting such talks at a summit scheduled to be held in Helsinki on Friday next week. However, starting the talks requires the agreement of all EU countries, and Poland has held out against it.
Ambassadors of the EU countries were not able to break the impasse on Wednesday.
Poland wants Russia to lift a ban it has imposed on imports of Polish meat and vegetables. Poland also wants Russia to commit to better cooperation on energy.
According to a Finnish Foreign Ministry source quoted by the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, a compromise might be reached on Poland's first demand with the help of EU food inspectors. The paper writes that the dispute on the energy question cannot be resolved under present conditions.
