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Medvedev proposes "text message" diplomacy (Roundup)

Apr 14, 2010, 17:42 GMT

Washington - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he and his US counterpart Barack Obama begin conducting diplomacy via text message.

'It takes too long for messages between Washington and Moscow to be printed and brought to us by our staff,' Medvedev said at the Brookings Institution think tank late Tuesday in Washington after the summit on nuclear security and terrorism.

Medvedev said that one of the problems Russia faces is 'technological underdevelopment.' But he added that he was trying to change and was steadily adopting more technology in his life.

'My life has changed because of technology. I used to start my morning with TV and newspapers. But now I go online and read the Russian media, foreign media, the media that favours the Russian president, the media that hates the Russian president,' he said, laughing.

'This provides an important overall view that my predecessors didn't get.'

Medvedev said that he had also started blogging on the presidential website and now several governors in Russia have followed him.

'In Russia this is important because we've had bureaucratic traditions for a long time and officials have been too far from the people,' he quipped.

According to Ria Novosti state news agency, Medvedev also suggested during his stay in Washington that the Kremlin would soon start 'tweeting' its news. But the Russian president added that a way to stop hackers accessing the Kremlin's Twitter account still needed to be found, he added.