SAN FRANCISCO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th October, 2018) Officials from Russia and the United States, representatives of business community, and experts will address the prospects of the bilateral relations between the two countries at the biannual Fort Ross Dialogue on Monday.
The seventh edition of the forum will be held in San Francisco, California.
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov and California Gov. Jerry Brown will attend the forum among other notable guests.
Antonov told reporters on Saturday that the participants of the forum would not only talk about the importance of friendly relations but also will discuss what specifically needs to be done to move forward and elevate bilateral relationship to a higher diplomatic level.
"We don't just discuss things there. The connections between the regions are getting established there, and there are already concrete results ... It's very important, because while at times it does not work out at the Federal level, at the regional level we have some sort of first results," Antonov noted.
Governor Brown noted that possible new cooperation between Russian and Californian companies would be discussed at the upcoming Fort Ross Dialogue.
"We look forward to that and we will be discussing some of these things at the Fort Ross Dialogue, and I am looking forward to that expanding now this year and in the years to come as a basis of focusing Russia and US relations in the Pacific and the West [Coast], where there is a lot of opportunity. California is the fifth largest economy in the world. The Silicon Valley, the Pacific region � these are very important areas of world. I hope that they can be places where Russians and Americans become closer in their collaboration," Brown told reporters.
Among other participants of the forum are former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, the governor of the Russian region of Novgorod, Andrey Nikitin, President of Chevron Neftegaz Andrew McGrahan, Transneft's Vice President Mikhail Margelov, as well as Sovcomflot Executive Vice President Nikolay Kolesnikov.
The topics that the participants will address cover prospects of US-Russian relations, future of technical, scientific and academic cooperation as well as assessment of the current state of bilateral relationship.
The Fort Ross Dialogue is an independent forum that has been held since 2012. It is sponsored by Chevron, Transneft, and Sovcomflot.
The forum became a biannual event last year, hosted by Russia in spring and by the United States in fall. This year's Russian session took place in the city of Veliky Novgorod in May.
The gathering is held against the backdrop of Fort Ross, a 19th-century fort complex built by Russian pioneers on the West Coast in what is now Sonoma County. Today, the fort and the nearby old Russian Orthodox cemetery with 131 identified graves are part of a state park registered as a US national historic landmark.
