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MINSK, November 27 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived
in the Belarusian capital on Friday. The Russian leader will participate in two
summits: between the heads of state of the member-countries of the Eurasian
Economic Community (EurAsEC) and between the leaders of the three countries
incorporated in the Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan).
The Russian president is expected to have a separate meeting with Kyrgyz
counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiyev and will visit a new building of the Russian
Embassy in Belarus.
Right upon the arrival, Medvedev went to the Belarusian National Library,
which is a venue of the summits. After a joint photo session the EurAsEC,
leaders will begin a session of the EurAsEC Interstate Council and a meeting of
the Customs Union supreme body in a narrow format and then in an enlarged
format.
After the negotiations, joint documents will be signed, and then the
presidents will make statements for the press.
“Moscow aims at a positive meeting,” a Kremlin official said earlier.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called forthcoming negotiations as “a
really historic event that we had been advancing to for a quite long period of
time, but persistently.”
The Eurasian Economic Community, which was established in 2000, is an
international economic organisation that is seeking to establish common external
customs borders of the EurAsEC states, to formulate the foreign economic policy,
tariffs, prices and other components of the common market.
The EurAsEC brings together Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and
Tajikistan. The presidents of these countries signed the EurAsEC founding treaty
in Astana on October 10, 2000. Uzbekistan joined the organisation on January 25,
2006, but the country withdrew from the EurAsEC at the end of 2008. Moldova,
Ukraine, Armenia and the Eurasian Bank of Development have the observer status
in the EurAsEC.
The Customs Union, which brings together Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, is a
common customs space, within which the common customs tariff is in effect in the
mutual trade, customs duties and economic restrictions are not applied, except
for special protective, antidumping and compensation measures.
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