Peter Mandelson has faced renewed calls to detail all his meetings with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

The Business Secretary used a letter to The Times to confirm reports that he first met the aluminium magnate four years ago - and to insist such relations with senior figures helped make him a better minister now.

A statement issued when the now Lord Mandelson returned to London from his EU Commission role in Brussels for a shock return to the Cabinet earlier this month mentioned meetings in 2006 and 2007.

However The Guardian reported on Friday that the two men had been seen together by a journalist at a Moscow restaurant in October 2004 after Lord Mandelson was appointed trade commissioner but before he took up the post.

Confirming the claim in The Times, Mr Mandelson wrote: "During the weekend when I moved from Brussels to London and prior to me being admitted to hospital for an urgent medical procedure, a statement was released to the press which said I had had meetings with Mr Deripaska in 2006 and 2007.

"Some people formed the reasonable view therefore that my first meeting with him was in 2006. This is not the case: to the best of my recollection we first met in 2004 and I met him several times subsequently."

In his letter, Lord Mandelson pointed out that the European Commission's Director General for Trade David O'Sullivan had publicly stated that Lord Mandelson made "no personal intervention to support the commercial interests of Mr Deripaska" in a decision on tariffs which benefited the multi-billionaire.

And he strongly defended his meetings with such figures.

"Naturally I met a great number of business people round the world as EC Trade Commissioner. I think this adds to what I bring to my job now," he wrote.

"In managing my Department's business as Secretary of State I will, of course, in line with the Ministerial Code, ensure that no conflict of interest, or perception of such, arises from any of my past or indeed future contacts."

He said he would take advice from his most senior civil servant and "continue to act with the public interest in mind, as the public has every right to expect".

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