BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

16/08/2006

Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus To Create Customs Union

MOSCOW (AP)--Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus will first create a trilateral customs union and other members of the Eurasian Economic Community will join it later.

Putin was sepaking after talks with leaders of five other ex-Soviet states to discuss creating a customs union and common energy market, and to coordinate their bids to join the World Trade Organization.

Leaders from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan joined Putin at his Black Sea residence in the resort of Sochi for talks focused on adding more substance to the Eurasian Economic Community - a grouping that aims to restore economic ties lost after the 1991 Soviet collapse.

In addition to creating a customs union and a common energy market, the presidents also discussed water regulation in Central Asia and setting up a Eurasian hydro-electric consortium.

The grouping's long-held cooperation plans have stalled amid differences over the size of their economies and levels of their development as Russia maneuvers to re-establish its clout in former Soviet republics.

At the start of the session, Putin said the group's members should coordinate their efforts with their bids to join the World Trade Organization.

"Our intentions to deepen cooperation in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Community, including the setting up of a customs union, should be clearly and precisely coordinated with the pace and details of WTO accession for each of our nations," Putin said in televised remarks.

Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have been involved in WTO accession talks, but for the grouping's other members, joining the global trade body has remained a distant perspective.

During Wednesday's meeting, Uzbekistan sealed its return to the Collective Security Treaty, an overlapping grouping that links Russia with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan was one of the founding members of the security grouping in 1992, but quit it in 1999 as Uzbek President Islam Karimov was flirting with the West.

Angered by strong Western criticism of his government's brutal suppression of a May 2005 uprising in the Uzbek city of Andijan, Karimov has moved back into Russia-led alliances. "This is an important event in the life of Uzbekistan," he said Wednesday.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian was attending the Eurasian Economic Community summit as an observer, as was Ukraine's new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, on his first trip abroad since being confirmed to the post by parliament earlier this month.

The Kremlin strongly backed Yanukovych's fraud-marred 2004 presidential bid, and his return to the premiership was widely seen as a victory to Moscow's interests in Ukraine and a counterbalance to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's efforts to move his nation closer to the West.

Source:

http://www.easybourse.com/Website/dynamic/News.php?NewsID=42631&lang=fra&NewsRubrique=2

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