Brussels, 17/07/2003 (Agence Europe) - Getting rid of visas for Russian citizens "could become a reality in five years", declared President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, in an interview in the Finnish magazine, Seura, on Wednesday. The spokesperson for the Commissioner in charge of immigration, was keen to explain that, "there is not fixed deadline". Community sources pointed out that the "long term objective" of scrapping these visas had been acknowledged at the last EU Russia summit in Saint Petersburg in May and that it would be very surprising to achieve the objective in such short a period of time. Russia was keen to highlight that on this subject, it would attempt to link the bilateral agreement on the return of illegal immigrants that the European Union wanted to sign.