MOSCOW, May 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russia wants visa facilitation and readmission agreements due to be signed this week with the European Union to come into force from January 1 next year, a presidential aide said Tuesday.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's pointman on relations with the EU, said: "We hope that by the end of this year the agreements will be ratified, and that our European partners will also ratify them. From January 1, 2007, we want the agreements to be in force."

Yastrzhembsky said that, although the EU was Russia's strategic partner, there were certain obstacles in relations with the union, particularly on economic matters.

"EU negotiators always have a well-defined mandate, and they have to return to Brussels if there is a necessity to go beyond the mandate," he said, adding that it takes a long time to translate documents into the official languages of the 25 EU member states.

Yastrzhembsky said that it was sometimes much easier to reach agreements with EU members bilaterally rather than at multilateral level, and cited Russia's agreements with Germany, Italy and France on simplifying visa regulations that were reached before those with the EU as a whole.