Vladimir Putin: Mr Martens, I'm very pleased to meet you and your colleagues.
You are well-known in Russia not only as a pan-European political leader, but also as the former Prime Minister of Belgium.

While you held this position, the situation in Belgium was calm and on the upsurge. Needless to say, we are very concerned about recent events in your country now. We are hoping that Belgium will show us a good example of settling ethnic differences.

As for cooperation with European conservative parties, I'm very pleased to note that United Russia has made certain progress in this respect. It has already established good bilateral contacts with German and Italian partners, to name but a few. In this context, I consider quite promising the development of relations with the European People's Party (EPP). This is why we are so happy to see you here. We are grateful to you for attending the Patriarch's enthronement. We believe this is a good sign for the beginning of our cooperation.

Wilfried Martens (as translated): Mr Putin, I'm very grateful to you for this invitation and this meeting. Indeed, I was Belgian Prime Minister for 12 years. Now our Government is in crisis, and I was even asked to help resolve it. I believe that after four or five days of efforts, we managed to restore stability. A new Government has been set up, and I'm hoping that it will be successful.

The EPP now has the largest group in European Parliament. They have the President of the Parliament, the President of the European Commission. And as you know, eminent members of our party include President Nicolas Sarkosy, Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, and the President of the Commission Mr Barroso, as well as many others.

I think we now have 13 heads of state and Government, Mr Basescu, the President of Romania, and others. So, as you said, we try to keep in mind also that there's always the first step for cooperation. And I'm happy I had several contacts with Mr Kosachev [Chairman of the State Duma International Affairs Committee].

As you know we have political groups in Europe, not only in the Parliament, but also in the Council of Europe, so we try to create a basis for this cooperation. So there's always the first step in the cooperation with political parties.

Vladimir Putin: How many seats does your party have in European Parliament?

Wilfried Martens: We have 288 seats out of 732.