The European Union and Russia agreed at a summit today to end a 20-year flight over access to Russian airspace, after a dispute over Polish meat imports blocked the start of talks on a broader cooperation pact.
Moscow and Brussels were to have used a summit in Finland to launch negotiations on a new wide-ranging partnership agreement but Poland blocked those talks, saying it wanted Russia first to lift its ban on Polish meat imports.
The partnership agreement was off the agenda but the EU and Russia did strike the deal on airspace and signalled they were ready to find a way out of the dispute over Polish meat.
"It has been a very good meeting, contrary to the public expectation," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told a news conference.
Russia 's President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would wait for the EU to solve the problem of the Polish veto and start the partnership talks, though he also chided the bloc for failing to speak with a single voice on the issue.
Putin called the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko a tragedy and expressed his condolences to the dead man's family. But he dismissed an accusation made by Litvinenko on his death-bed that Putin had him poisoned.
"It is very sad that a tragic event like the death of a man is being used for political speculation," Putin said, in his first public comments on Litvinenko, a Kremlin opponent.
Moscow banned imports of meat from Poland over concerns the country was being used to smuggle unsafe meat from elsewhere.
Poland 's veto on the launch of partnership talks exasperated some EU governments who are keen to present a united front to Russia - the bloc's biggest energy supplier.
It also exposed deep-seated grievances between Russia and former Soviet satellite Poland .
But EU chiefs and Putin made light of the issue at the close of the summit. Putin said he had no problem with Polish meat. "Polish producers are good at their craft," he said.
Picking up on the theme, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso joked: "Maybe since everyone agrees Polish meat is so good, at the next summit we can have a good Polish steak during lunch."
Putin made no mention of an earlier threat to escalate the row with Poland by banning all EU meat imports.