Informal CIS summit opens in Kremlin

The leaders of 11 former Soviet republics have begun their informal summit in the Kremlin.
Last year’s “shirt-sleeves” summit in Moscow on December 20 marked the 20th anniversary of the post-Soviet CIS alliance, a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday.

Addressing the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the economic and cultural ties between CIS nations.
“We can hardly develop and function efficiently without each other,” the spokesman quoted Putin as saying.
The meeting in the Kremlin follows a session of a CIS security structure, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, held on Tuesday morning.

The informal CIS summit is expected to consider ways of further integrating natural resource, technological, intellectual and labor potentials of the countries, the Kremlin source said.

Last October, the countries signed an agreement on free trade within the CIS.

This year, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan instituted a common economic space that provides free movement of commodities, services and capital through the partners’ borders.

Combined with the Customs Union between these three countries, the common economic space is designed as a step toward the Eurasian Economic Union proposed by Kazakhstan in 1994.
The CIS alliance includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tajikistan, and Moldova, with Turkmenistan as an unofficial member and Ukraine de facto participating. This year Turkmenistan holds the rotating presidency in the alliance. <Cihan>

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