President Vladimir Putin met on 11-12 April with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in St. Petersburg to discuss Iraq and the impact of the conflict there on other global hotspots, including the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Korean Peninsula, Russian and Western media reported. During a joint press conference on 11 April, Putin said the fastest way to return Iraq to normalcy would be to administer the country under the aegis of the United Nations. He said that the forces of the U.S.-led coalition have not yet achieved the main goal of the military operation: locating and securing any weapons of mass destruction that the regime of deposed Iraqi President Hussein might have amassed. \"Nobody liked the regime of Saddam Hussein, except Hussein himself...but we cannot export a capitalist, democratic revolution,\" Putin said. He argued that the best model for stabilizing Iraq is Afghanistan. \"There should be an international conference under the aegis of the UN and a temporary national administration should prepare and hold democratic elections designed to return control of the country to the Iraqi people,\" Putin said. (Interfax)