(Adds quotes, details and background) By Piotr Skolimowski WARSAW, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Poland will uphold its veto on talks for a new partnership agreement between the European Union and Russia until Moscow lifts its ban on Polish meat imports, Warsaw's Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper said on Saturday. "As things stand today -- and I talked to Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski late yesterday -- Poland will not withdraw its veto right now," Lepper, who is also deputy prime minister, told a news conference in the northern city of Bydgoszcz. Warsaw vetoed the launch of talks on a new overarching deal at the end of last year in protest against a year-old Russian ban on imports of meat from Poland. Moscow had threatened an EU-wide ban from Jan. 1 because of concerns about meat imports from Bulgaria and Romania which joined the bloc at the start of the year, but this was averted last month. Negotiations on an EU-Russia deal remain on ice and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating six-month EU presidency, is expected to raise the issue with President Vladimir Putin when she visits Moscow on Sunday. The existing partnership and cooperation agreement is due to expire. It covers such issues as energy, trade, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. RUSSIAN CONCERNS On Friday, Lepper met Russian Agricultural Minister Alexei Gordeyev and the European Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou to discuss the Polish ban on the sidelines of events to mark the EU's "Green Week" in Berlin. The meeting took place after talks between health experts from the EU, Russia and Poland in the German capital on Wednesday had failed to end the impasse. The EU reiterated its view on Saturday that the ban should be lifted immediately. "As far as we are concerned, the documents we gave on Friday answer all of Russia's concerns. They do have a right to send a team of experts into Poland to see for themselves, but we also deem that this is unnecessary," a spokesman for Kyprianou said. Moscow said it would "take time to look at the documents" and would send any questions it still might have over Poland's meat safety standards to the Commission in the coming weeks. Lepper confirmed that a group of Russian and EU experts would conduct a joint inspection of Polish meat producing facilities in the next two weeks. "The will exists and a date has been set for a high-rank technical meeting within the next two weeks, followed by two more weeks to settle that issue," Lepper aid. The Polish minister agreed with comments made earlier on Saturday by Gordeyev in which he stated that the matter was now an issue to be resolved by Brussels and Moscow. "EU representatives have finally reached the conclusion that the trade problems with Russia are not between Poland and Russia, but between Russia and the EU and that pleases us," Lepper said. Gordeyev described it as a new approach, but Kyprianou's spokesman said the Commission "was always an interlocutor". One EU source described Gordeyev's comments as "spin". "You can't just exclude Poland from the negotiations, it doesn't make sense," the source said. "It's also ironic that at the start of the talks a few months back, the Russians wouldn't talk to the Commission on this issue and now they seem to have changed their tune." (Additional reporting by Darren Ennis in Brussels and Julie Tolkacheva in Moscow)
