Kazakhstan «opened a window» to Finland

ASTANA. March 19. KAZINFORM - Today the Kazakh Embassy has been opened in Helsinki. The presentation ceremony was attended by the head of the diplomatic mission of Kazakh Foreign Minister Yerlan Idrisov, Minister for EU Affairs and Foreign Trade Alexander Stubb, as well as Kazakhstan's ambassador to that country Galymzhan Koishybayev.

This news has been written in Express-K newspaper (№ 49 (17649) on 19.03.2013 titled "Kazakhstan has opened a window to Finland" by Timur Netaliev.

These days weather in Helsinki is so cold that even Finns famous for their phlegm try to move faster. So the opening of the embassy was extremely agile. The Kazakh diplomatic mission is located on the fifth floor of the building in an ordinary neighborhood with a three-star hotel and a Japanese barbershop. Nearby in the same nondescript houses there are embassies of Portugal, Japan and Austria. The choice of this location is well within the President Nursultan Nazarbayev voiced principle of budget cuts.

In Helsinki Yerlan Idrisov arrived at the invitation of his Finnish counterpart Erkki Tuomioja. The minister scheduled to have talks with representatives of political and business circles of Finland.

The negotiations with the Minister for European Affairs and Foreign Trade of Finland Alexander Stubb touched upon the state and prospects of bilateral cooperation in the context of the upcoming the state visit of the President of Finland Sauli Niinistö in Kazakhstan April 16-18 this year. The two sides also discussed the Iranian nuclear issue, Afghanistan and the forthcoming exhibition EXPO 2017.

After the talks Idrisov and Stubb answered questions of the journalists.