BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
08/12/2010
Duma ratifies RF-Belarus military-technical coop agreement
MOSCOW, December 8 (Itar-Tass) -- The State Duma ratified on Wednesday the agreement on the development of military-technical cooperation between Russia and Belarus. It was signed in Moscow on December 10, 2009.
The agreement regulates the deliveries of military purpose products for national armed forces, army units, law enforcement and security services, said Nikolai Pankov, the state secretary and deputy defense minister of the Russian Federation. These products include armaments, military equipment, as well as results of intellectual activity and information in the military-technical sphere.
Under the agreement, these deliveries are made under contracts concluded by authorized organizations of the parties without issuing licenses to the import and export of military purpose products. These products are transferred across the border in accordance with customs rules of each country and are exempt from customs duties and levies.
Pankov stressed that fulfilling the agreement, each party undertakes not to sell nor to hand over military purpose products to a third party, including international organizations and foreign legal and natural persons. The same applies to information and other knowledge obtained in the framework of the agreement. These provisions, as well as the provisions on control and use for the purpose and protection of the right to intellectual activity remain valid even after the operation of the agreement is terminated, unless the parties arrange it differently. The agreement does not affect the rights and obligations of the parties under other international agreements. It can be amended by separate protocols, while disputes and differences are resolved through mutual consultations and negotiations.
The specific feature of the package of documents submitted for ratification is that "this is the first time that enterprises of the defense industry complex of the Russian Federation receive the right and opportunity to work directly with Belarussian enterprises," Pankov said. "As is known, there are 23 subjects of military-industrial cooperation in Russia; there are many more of them in Belarus, and these subjects of military-technical cooperation receive legal and legislative opportunity to establish direct relations," he said.
The indexes of the military purpose products turnover between Russia and Belarus are varied, the deputy defense minister said. "They amounted to 33 million dollars last year and are planned around 29 million dollars this year, and there are reasons to say that these planned indexes will be surpassed," he said.
Alexei Ostrovsky, the chairman of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs and Ties with Compatriots, is his turn, believes that "on the whole the agreement creates conditions in the context of international law for intensification of mutual deliveries of military purpose products of the sides." He is certain that the implementation of the agreement will have a favorable effect on modernization of production facilities of the military-industrial complexes of Russia and Belarus and on the development of the latest samples of armaments and military equipment.
Source:
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15760086&PageNum=0
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