German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a US$2 billion deal Tuesday to bring German high-speed trains to Russia's national railway. 

Under the agreement, German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG will provide Russia with 60 InterCity Express, or ICE, trains that will be used between Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

"The trade between Germany and Russia is developing very dynamically," Schroeder said, capping two days of talks between the leaders. "Russia is an enormously important market in which German companies must be present."

The trains will be partially built in Russia, and the agreement includes an option for 90 more trains, Siemens CEO Heinrich von Pierer said.

Schroeder gave Putin a firsthand look at the trains earlier in the day, taking him on a 112-kilometer trip from Hamburg to the northern town of Schleswig for the final stop in two days of formal German-Russian talks focused on boosting economic ties.

Schroeder and his wife, Doris Schroeder-Koepf, who adopted a 3-year-old Russian girl this summer, invited Putin to their private home in Hanover afterward before the Russian leader's departure planned for late yesterday.

Like other recent meetings between German and Russian leaders, Putin's visit was designed to show that ties between him and Schroeder extend beyond formalities to friendship.

The sleek ICE train traveling up to 160 kilometers an hour took the two leaders on a one-hour, 20-minute trip north to Schleswig for meetings at a 16th-century castle near the Danish border.

(China Daily December 22, 2004)