Schroder and Chirac rebuff Putin on EU growth

The leaders of France and Germany on Sunday told President Vladimir Putin of Russia that EU enlargement was an issue for the bloc to decide, not Russia.  Russia has been alarmed at the growth of the European Union to incorporate former Kremlin satellites and its officials have hinted that the crisis besetting the European constitution may be a good moment to put further expansion on hold.  The problem of the constitution and enlargement are "a problem for EU members," Chancellor Gerhard Schrцder of Germany said at a joint news briefing with Putin and President Jacques Chirac of France. "This has nothing to do with what we describe as our strategic partnership with Russia," he added after the meetings in this city outside the Baltic port of Kaliningrad.  Despite differences over enlargement, Putin, Schrцder and Chirac appeared friendly and relaxed in one another's company.  All three will be at the Group of Eight, or G-8, industrial nations summit meeting this week in Gleneagles, Scotland, and their talks touched on the issues of climate change, Africa and United Nations reform that will be on the agenda there.  Chirac said the G-8 leaders, after tough discussions, were "heading toward" an agreement on climate change at the summit meeting being held Wednesday through Friday, but he did not say what deal.  On Iraq, another issue likely to crop up at Gleneagles, Putin said past criticism of the U.S.-led invasion - by countries including France, Russia and Germany - should not get in the way of Iraq's future.  "All contradictions over Iraq should be left in the past," he said. "We must unite with the U.S., with those who are trying to change the situation in Iraq."  The Kaliningrad region, the venue for the meeting Sunday, stands as a symbol of how Russia and the EU are intertwined. Formerly the Prussian city of Kцnigsberg, it is now a Russian exclave encircled by EU territory.  Moscow is worried that if the EU continues its eastward expansion, countries like Ukraine and Georgia could join the bloc next.  The Kremlin is also unhappy at what it sees as anti-Russian sentiment in some former Communist-bloc states now in the EU: Kaliningrad's neighbors Poland and Lithuania were pointedly not invited to the commemoration Sunday.  A senior Kremlin source said on the eve of the talks that the votes in the Netherlands and France rejecting the European constitution - a charter designed to help the bloc's expansion - called for a new look at EU-Russian relations.  But Chirac joined Schrцder in gently rebuffing the idea. "Europe is again undergoing a difficult period, you may call it a crisis," the French president said.  "This crisis will be overcome. In any case, it will not have any consequences for EU-Russian relations."  Kaliningrad, the birthplace of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, was last week celebrating 750 years since it was founded by Teutonic knights. It was signed over to Moscow in the Potsdam accords at the end of World War II.  The region's convoluted history raised a laugh at the news briefing when Schrцder said that for Germans the city will always be Kцnigsberg. But he corrected himself, saying: "Of course, I don't mean any territorial claims."