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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets with President of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Lamine Diack

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Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Mr President, we are very happy to see you.  The Athletics Federation is the biggest organisation of its type in terms of the competitions conducted, the number of participants, and its place among other sports associations.

As you know, we are getting ready to host the Winter Olympics in 2014. It’s a great honour for us to hold the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in the summer of 2013 as well. We are very pleased to have this opportunity and would like to thank you for it once again.

Russia has amassed great experience in conducting major competitions. Of course, we still need to take care of some things in order to hold the championship according to modern standards. I’d like to assure you that the Russian government and the Moscow Mayor’s Office (our mayor is present here) will do everything in their power to ensure the success of the World Championships in Athletics in 2013. We’d like to see you more often as we prepare for these competitions.

Lamine Diack (via interpreter): Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. I’d also like to thank you for finding the time to see me.

I already had the honour of being received by you five years ago, in 2006. At that time, we spoke about the Olympics in Sochi and about the future of athletics here in Russia and in the rest of the world. I think that we understood each other very well. I left your office with a sense of your support for athletics, and, after this meeting, we received a new sponsor – VTB Bank. We are very pleased that Russia will be organising the World Championships in 2013. My mission became much easier after I met with you.

I hope that we’ll continue in the same spirit over the next four years. I’m very glad that I have this opportunity to talk with you and share my concerns. We are very happy with the development of athletics in Russia. We had some concerns over anti-doping measures, but now everything has been taken care of. Our organisation and the Ministry of Sport have done very well.