France Fit

Today in Deauville, France, President Obama and Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev announced several new key agreements, including a joint statement on counterterrorism cooperation and a joint report on the assessment of 21st-century missile challenges.

The counterterrorism agreement calls for focusing on “all aspects of this challenge through cooperative actions of law enforcement, transportation security, intelligence sharing, terrorism finance, counterterrorism technology, and within the framework of multilateral fora such as the United Nations, Group of Eight, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and the soon-to-be established Global Counterterrorism Forum.”

The missile report is the product of the joint threat assessment work outlined in the joint statements of Obama and Medvedev dated April 1 and July 6, 2009. “The two-year process entailed expert-level exchanges between U.S. and Russian security experts,” the White House said in a fact sheet, noting this process was chaired by acting Assistant Secretary of State Vann Van Diepen and Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Valeriy Nazarov and Assistant to the Secretary of the Security Council Yevgeniy Lukyanov.

The new agreements also include a joint statement on broad cooperation in the Bering Strait region.

This year's Group of 8 summit is being held in Deauville.