Top three and St. Petersburg talk

Top three and St. Petersburg talk

RUSSIA: The leaders of France, Germany and Russia ended two days of talks in Saint Petersburg on Saturday, with fresh calls for a central UN role in the reconstruction of Iraq.

The encounter ended without a joint declaration from Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Putin said in a speech at the Saint Petersburg Law Faculty that the three leaders, who strongly opposed the U.S.-led drive on Baghdad without UN approval, agreed that only the United Nations can oversee the rebuilding of Iraq.

"The UN Security Council must confer legitimacy" on any reconstruction efforts, said Schroeder, who was awarded an honorary law degree from the university, where Putin himself once studied.

"It is an honor that encourages me to strengthen relations between Russia and Germany," Schroeder said, pledging that Germany would help develop the university's legal library.

Putin called the award a "small stone added to the foundations of relations between Russia and Europe". --AFP