BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/03/2008

Zubkov satisfied with steady work of Russia, Belarus governments

MINSK, March 21 (Itar-Tass) - Work of the Russia-Belarus union state is rhythmic and useful, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said in opening remarks at the bilateral governmental talks in Minsk on Friday.

He said "meetings of prime ministers and the Council of Ministers of the union state are regular, and regularity of these meeting is determined by the fact that deputy prime ministers Sergei Naryshkin and Andrei Kobyakov work regularly".

The sides will review during Friday's meeting how earlier orders are fulfilled.

"In this year's January the sides held a lot of meetings, substantively examined the questions that arise in the course of cooperation," he went on to say.

Zubkov stressed that Friday's meeting of the Council of Ministers that would open after the talks was the first in this year.

"The agenda is very tight, and it contains a wide range of union cooperation matters," he said.

He said he had met Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko over a wide range of matters of economic cooperation, work of commissions and the union government.

Belarussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky in turn said that work of the two countries' deputy prime ministers in the working group that they head was effective.

"It is pleasant that Kobyakov and Naryshkin have actively joined this work and they work with ministers. This has been also confirmed at the meeting of the Russian premier with Alexander Lukashenko," he said.

"We have made sure that such format of work allows us doing all we can in order to make decisions at the level of the union state for speeding up the mutual union integration, Sidorsky said.

He stressed that work on the union integration was carried out with consideration for the economic and financial cataclysms in the world "in order our economies feel steady and meet the tendencies on international financial markets," Sidorsky said.

Source:

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12501977&PageNum=0

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