(Note: Russian Minister of Defense Serdyukov's remarks are through interpreter.)

MIN. SERDYUKOV: Here now something that I would like to point out that our military-to-military cooperation is one of the key and most important and probably one of the most important elements of the bilateral U.S.-Russian relations development. Over the last few years, the cooperation between the United States and Russia has been developing in a good path. I just hope that in the future we'll keep cooperating very successfully in the areas of common interests.

(Inaudible) -- makes it possible to say that our cooperation, our military-to-military cooperation has greatly increased. And this is also -- and this testifies also to the number of joint events that we been having lately.

On the other hand, against a good ground base we are enjoying lately, there were some specific points that deteriorate our relations. I propose that in the course of our negotiations we should discuss these points in more detail.

Thank you very much.

SEC. GATES: Thank you for your welcome. It's exciting to be back in Moscow after almost 15 years. I look forward to our conversations. I'd like to congratulate you on your appointment, and I hope that we can have the same good working relationship that our predecessors did. I look forward to working with you today and in the future and seeing how we can even more positively develop military-to-military relationships.

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