courtyards see these are our top stories the new exodus christians in iraq feared they are being driven out of their country with constant sectarian attacks targeting a minority group. with some u.s. politicians famous for the bloopers they make when advising the world on democracy whether americans even care enough to notice. and a new chapter in egypt on brad labor unions and state media workers joined the public outrage over the current president slamming the u.s. for its blind support of his regime. also the baltics brain drain lithuania one

of europe's highest emigration rates with increasing numbers of graduates seeking better and poignant opportunities away from home. up next al gore nov talks with the finnish foreign minister about why he's sore russia and the e.u. will scrap the visa regime before twenty eight spotlight is next here on our city. hello again and welcome to spotlight the interview show car seat algorithm and today my guest on the show is alexander stille. there have been some good

news coming in from st petersburg over the last couple of days they say visa free travel will be introduced between russia and the e.u. before two thousand and eighteen and that means there will be no problem for the european football fans to come to the world cup that russia will be ousted our source in the russian northern capital is reliable the foreign minister of finland who is on a visit what makes the minister so optimistic and is this the only good news let's ask alexander stille. numbers one brushes news devoted counters over the question of ending the visa regime between moscow and europe besides helsinki is pursuing constructive policy of dialogue with moscow over the arctic finland says it wants to build a partnership with russia similar to one it has with no way the future prospects and problems of the region have been the topic of the finnish russian partnership

seminar in st petersburg. how is this so welcome to the show thank you very much for being with us. well first of all to me first of all mr is it is it true that you can run up to forty kilometers a day on skis that you're a keen skier and this was the reason why you proposed there in st petersburg you propose missed the children and gara of a famous russian traveller to take a trip to the north pole is it true how do you read in something. i do love skiing and i do ski a lot and i actually skied four to k last week and the race and when he proposed to me to go to the north pole i said that would be fantastic as long as i can ski a little bit we made a deal and we're going i don't know when but we will be going but he said that if you want to go to the north pole you should ski at least sixty kilometers

a day can you do that i think that's manageable as well i'm doing a ninety k. race in about a month and in a city called better but to get a little bit of sleep before that but i'm sure we can manage that as well as long as the skis are good so so you're ready you're you're a typical finn so a typical firm can do are up to a hundred today is that true. you know on i wish we would but no we do like our skiing and it's been wonderful much like here in st petersburg we've had a lot of snow this winter and it's been actually a great pleasure to be able to put on my good old cross-country skis and do a little bit of training in a we travel so much with this job you need a little bit of exercise and cross-country skiing is is the best way to do it ok ok so we'll be following your trip to the north pole so so we'll keep an eye on you. good luck good luck on the flip out thanks i want to see on skis as well well i i i do downhill i did downhill i didn't i didn't have enough enough. health to do

cross-country especially at at a long distance well let's let's the way to politics here in st petersburg and the main purpose of the visit to russia this time as far as i understand is to boost the copper ration between finland and russia in the northwest what what are the practical results you've managed to reach so far will the corporation develop beyond joint skiing trips and timber and wood working business i'm sure it will and practically i think we are trying to promote really two things one is visa freedom between russia and the european union and as you said in your introduction we're trying to push before the world championships in football in two thousand and eighteen and of course in that final we are going to see finland and russia we have a good i think road map for step by step approach of getting this visa freedom and

i think finland knows what it's talking about because we need today issued nine hundred and sixty thousand visas to russian nationals per year we just opened the biggest visa center in the world here in st petersburg but nevertheless we think the lower you can bring the barriers the better off we are so that's point number one and point number two is actually the economy and free trade and i think we need to work on not. we need to get more free trade between the european union and russia i think it's mutually beneficial i think it will help to modernize the russian economy and hopefully also push russia into the w t o so these are the sort of two concrete steps that we've come out with in this region well finland really stresses and this is not the first time we hear from finnish representatives that the visa regime between russia and the shan again zone could be lifted before two thousand and eighteen what should russia do to make it possible or what should the

europeans do what are the major obstacles today well on the russian side i would say that they're pretty much sri things that should be done before we can go to visa liberalization number one is biometric passports approximately ten to fifteen percent of the russian population have passports the more biometric passports the better issue number two is linked to registration there is a slightly old fashioned registration system that if you're a foreigner and you come to russia you have to within three days register yourself now it's fine in a big hotel in a big city in moscow or st petersburg but if you are in a small place bed and breakfast in jaroslav it might get a little bit complicated and the third thing has to do with work permits of the system is raw the bureaucratic costs lee and ineffective and if we can facilitate those things i think we're on the right path and i think there are p. and union has a lot of goodwill as well it's a two way street we need to have our border controls in better shape on the rest of

it but i'm very optimistic that we'll get to be so liberalization and i think we will be better off for that russia will be better off for that the lower the barriers to better well i would say that it's a combination of optimistic and pessimistic side well. signs well there are grounds for optimism as you say but on the other hand on the other hand. this system of registration that you have mentioned isn't getting any any better isn't it is becoming an easy for for visitors to russia that makes me pessimistic but there's another side of for optimism once again russia has recently allowed a seventy two hours these are free travel to st petersburg from finland how does this decision influence the number of tourists oh yeah it has so many so many more fans now travel to russia and especially to st petersburg and this seventy two year lift of the v.

is a story seventy two hour lift of the vs us to do with the crew ships and we'd of course love to see the same thing with this new allegro train you know it only takes three hours and twenty six minutes to go from the center of helsinki to the center of st petersburg i think this is great for all russians who want to travel to helsinki for the weekend and all finns who want to travel to st petersburg this type of facilitation is indeed very welcome well i do have problems reading finnish newspapers but this is what i what i what i came up with know well what i was getting ready to tuck to hell cindy in some no mater newspaper in finland here's what that writes at least three thousand lines communities one to offer school children courses in russian as an alternative to mandatory swedish a number of communities in the east of finland are saying that more widespread

knowledge of russian would be more useful locally than the swedish language which is finland second official language do you foresee that the interest to russian language will continue rising in your country i'll say directly i wanted to rise i want as many finns a spa civil to speak russian you know i belong to jenner. aeration whereby our fourth language was always german then we became members of the european union people said you should learn french i have a big handicap and that is that i don't speak russian and i just wish i could turn the clock back and learn russian it's a hugely important language for us i come from a bilingual family i speak swedish from my dad and i spoke finish with my mom when she was alive so both languages were very important i also always promote as many languages as possible and i think more finns should study russian and we should

provide for that opportunity especially in the eastern border i don't think it should be juxtaposed against swedish or any of the other language for that matter but we need to provide the opportunity for the finns to learn russian because it's a great business opportunity it's a great cultural part to nitty and the more finns speaking russian the better well i guess what you're doing now is it may be called border diplomacy well let's talk about the demand for finnish language for finnish language teaches in the neighboring regions of russia what about i do you know anything about it well i don't really know that much about it i mean of course there are strong linguistic and cultural laying says specially in karelia. a lot of different variations of finnish are spoken the karelian language is not a variation of finnish a such but has roots in it again the more you promote minority lang which is the more languages you speak i think the better but i think the biggest handicap that

we have in finland is not enough finns speak russian we actually fortunately nowadays have a russian speaking minority of fifty two thousand people and i think that has enriched our culture a lot but we have to sort of plug into that three source when we want people to do business in russia and i also want to teach young children and. in finland russian i had a chance to visit a school here in st petersburg today finish school and all the kids spoke russian and i was very envious but at the same time happy but but do you can you say that that this board of diplomacy really happens on the grassroots level not only on the foreign ministry level is it happening this is very important well i hope it will happen the more cultural exchanges the more business the more people traveling i think the better off we are i mean people must understand in russia that for us

the st petersburg region the leningrad old bust is extremely important it's a source of basin is it's a sort of source of exchange we work a lot in v board we'll work a locked in st petersburg i'm going up to petro squad tomorrow so and it's a great base is opportunity i met a lot of finnish business leaders here in st petersburg today and their basic message was that more finns should plug into the wonderful market resources that you have here so yeah i mean i do my main core business with sergei lavrov in moscow that's the diplomacy that i do and then the grassroots diplomacy here on the border is very important finish for a minister alexander stubb talking to us from st petersburg spotlight will be back shortly after a break we'll continue this interview don't go. bringing

you the latest in science and technology from the realms. we've got the future covered. would be soo much brighter if you mean newly back from phillips to question these. stunts on t.v. dot com. welcome

back to spotlight algor narbonne just a reminder that my guests today is finnish foreign minister alexander stubb. mr serb welcome back to the spotlight well let's talk about a political issue that is maybe a stumbling block in the russian finnish relations what i mean is the issue of the korea and territories which belong to russia since nine hundred forty do they have any weight in federal and domestic policies can if in the land raise this issue one day what would you say. well i think you know we have the treaty of paris and we don't have a territorial issue with russia my family my both grandparents were born in v. borg my dad was born in khaki so mean karelia there's of course an emotional

attachment to historical and cultural attachment but in terms of politics no so my basic philosophy is very simple let's try to bring down the border barriers as much as possible and then let's do exchange through that way but they are not a stumbling block in our relations so so we we don't have any grounds to saying that there are like timebombs in the history in russia finnish relations you know ok now next question i think finnish finnish or fin it ok go ahead sorry i was going to say that the finnish russian relations have always been very pragmatic and in that sense i don't see these issues as a time bomb at all so i'm not worried ok now let's talk about the the the arctic those finland consider joining business projects in the russian arctic which are very important today according to what the the the the russian

leadership says. yeah definitely i mean it's an untapped resource the arctic it's very important from a climate change an environmental perspective it's very important from an energy perspective and therefore it becomes important also from an economic perspective we are members and founding members of the arctic council of seven states but we are not a coastline state like for instance russia canada and the united states and norway so we want to do some bilateral cooperation and that's why we today launched together with russian authorities a bilateral cooperation project with russia and i think the value added is if the northern passage ways and when the northern passage ways open up we have a lot of ice breakers a lot of good transport and i think it's an area where we can work very closely with our russian friends. there was this this agreement between helsinki and moscow

over the in got out of the case and it has been making headlines for quite a while has any progress been reached over this disputed matter you know the more intercultural marriages you have between russians and finns the more these types of disputes you have i mean i have a few basic ideas i'm not the first one is i think it's very good to keep them out of the public eye if you will i think family disputes social. affairs should be kept out because a very often private matters the second thing is i think we have to go by the rule of law here each of the countries have their own specific rules and regulations on this on child custody for instance and the third one is i think it would help a lot and i've said this before if russia would join the haag convention on child abduction because that's where you have the rules and regulations these issues are of course very unfortunate but i think they can be done and dealt with in

a very civilized manner. on january nineteenth and twentieth british prime minister david cameron house did the first nordic baltic summit to consolidate and alliance of common interest russia is both a nordic country and the baltic country but it was not invited to the summit why. well it's probably more of britain getting together with some so-called smaller states one framework was probably the european union and the idea was to check out the six nordic and baltic states which are in the european union and see what kind of economic cooperation you could have what we're starting to see i think in international affairs is the formation of small coalitions left and right and this was just a way of i think the brits to get together a like minded liberal economically open group of smaller countries i don't think it was anything more or anything less than that i wouldn't read too

much into it to be honest but you know many many people in russia considered this i mean russia not being invited as a sign that this this body is meant to be sort of anti russian could well what would you say could a sort of a mini nato be created by the nordic countries aiming to neutralize russia on the baltic sea and then the arctic what would you say maybe said she didn't know i would say that i heard that interpretation through some russian media but i would say that it's quite a wild interpretation i don't think it was anything of that kind you know the grouping that was there you had. two countries that where in the e.u. but not in nato you had two countries that are in nato not in the e.u. you had three baltic states which are in both and then denmark which is in nato but doesn't participate in european defense so no i don't think that was the idea at

all and as a matter of fact i think you know for us finland and many other countries in the region the basic a is to integrate and bring russia ask close as possible in to the european structures i don't think that there should be a juxtaposition anymore between the west and russia choir. the contrary it is in our economic interest and other interest to bring back so that type of perhaps suspicion zero sum thinking in my mind is a little bit old fashioned why don't we have russia in a similar type of informal meeting when it's organized the next time around i think that would be a good idea well there was a meeting preceding this this. nordic summit actually took place in norway it was a meeting of defense ministers of nordic countries and the british defense minister who was present there mr fox stated that the purpose of the meeting was i quote to

ensure that we create a nato entity that finland and sweden feel a little more comfortable with that we give further security to article five in the baltic states by being a nuclear power as part of that grouping and that as a nato grouping we are better able to deal with regional this be it's with russia and quelled that was a quote from the british defense minister what are those regional this period with russia do you do do you really recognize any any regional this do feel they really exist no i think quite the contrary to be quite honest i think the most central security political forum in europe today is the russia nato council that's where issues such as missile defense that's where issues

such as the future threats are being dealt with again i really want to get away from the old school cold war type of rhetorical juxtaposition between the west and russia i think that's a little bit old fashioned and we do have nordic corporation on the. ns but then of course we have security guarantees in the european union but i don't foresee any bigger problems with russia or any of our regional partners. so i do find the quote quite interesting but i wouldn't sign it myself. ok yeah you actually see you belong as far as i understand you belong to the right wing of finland politics this is that mean you believe that finland should one day become a member of nato should finland join nato what would you say well double

definition here i'm actually sent to ride liberal so rightwing is i think a little bit on the excessive side on on on on my part i'm very much an internationalist and i do believe in free markets and i think the european union is the best membership that we have gotten our government policy is very clear we're quite relaxed about nato in other words we have three options one is to shut the door permanently one is to open it immediately and one is to hold it a little bit to jar and open and we've chosen for the last option we haven't shot anything down and in the meanwhile what we do we are a partner of nato we were strongly involved in k. four in kosovo and we were are strongly involved in ice south in afghanistan as i said i would argue that russia actually has closer a closer relationship with nato through the russian nato council than finland house

today and in a case in finland there is not a majority of the population that pushes for nato membership so it's not an issue for the time being ok but listen today. yesterday. president obama of the united states said that the future of the world is in cold. coalitions are they get way to to the future so. there's that mean that nato really wants as more countries as possible to joy nato how strongly do you feel nato won finland in science as asian led to difficult to say because i'm not nato i'm finland to a certain extent and and all of those decisions are up to finland itself and the countries who perhaps want to join at some stage i think what nato is doing is trying to find as many partners as possible the times of the cold war the

confrontation between russia and nato i think are over and nato has a much more global role you know it's seeking to work in kosovo it's working in afghanistan in the i suffer peroration we have the better part of fifty states dealing with afghanistan including russia we are almost eighty countries and so in that sense you know it's a very broad coalition i also think that nato nowadays focuses a lot on crisis management operation and also on the civilian side i mean look mark sedwill for instance is the civilian a representative of nato in in afghanistan so they did their new concept their new strategic concept in nato and i think what you get is what you see and nato wants to cooperate very closely with its partner countries such as finland and with other countries such as russia thank you thank you very much for being with us and just to remind you that my guest on the show today was alexander's the foreign minister of fed and their third for now for all of us here if you want to have yourself

quite light or have someone in mind who you think i fit into the next time drop me a line spotlight will be back with more first and comment on what's going on in and outside russia until then stay and r.t. and take care. thank you. hungry for the full story we've got it first hand the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers.

that's.