by the announcement by Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov during his meeting with Putin on 5 December 2007, that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, would take part in the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times. The sortie was to be backed up by 47 aircraft, including strategic bombers. According to Serdyukov, this is an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols on the world's oceans, the view that is also supported by Russian media. The military analyst from Novaya Gazeta Pavel Felgenhauer believes that the accident-prone Kuznetsov is scarcely seaworthy, and is more of a menace to her crew than any putative enemy. In September 2007, Putin visited Indonesia, and in doing so, became the first Russian leader to visit the country in more than 50 years. In the same month, Putin also attended the APEC meeting held in Sydney, Australia, where he met with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and signed a uranium trade deal. This was the first visit of a Russian president to Australia. On 16 October 2007, Putin visited Tehran, Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit, where he met with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other participants were leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. This is the first visit of a leader from the Kremlin to Iran, since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943. At a press conference after the summit, Putin stated that "all our (Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". During the summit, it was also agreed that its participants, under no circumstances, would let any third-party state use their territory as a base for aggression or military action against any other participant. On 26 October 2007, at a press conference following the 20th Russia-EU Summit in Portugal, Putin proposed to create a Russian-European Institute for Freedom and Democracy, headquartered either in Brussels, or in one of the European capitals, and added that "we are ready to supply funds for financing it, just as Europe covers the costs of projects in Russia". This newly proposed institution is expected to monitor human rights violations in Europe, and contribute to development of European democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin and ex-U.S. President George W. Bush failed to resolve their differences over U.S. plans for the planned missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, on their meeting