Single Economic Space, Eurasian community parallel processes – Kazakh leader

Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty
18 Jun 04

Astana, 18 June: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev does not agree
with an opinion on mutual exclusion of the two integration associations
– the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) and the Single Economic Space
(SES).

“Both these integration associations do not exclude one another, and
each association is developing in its own way,” the Kazakh president
said speaking at an international forum entitled “Eurasian integration:
tendencies of modern development and challenges of globalization”
in Astana today.

The development of the EAEC and the SES is fitting well into a
multilevel thesis which has different speeds of integration in the
framework of the CIS, Nazarbayev said.

The SES includes Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The EAEC includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Tajikistan.

Nazarbayev noted that the EAEC was viable and developing organization
of cooperation of the Eurasian five countries.

“The EAEC countries account for over 80 per cent of external trade
operations and over 60 per cent of customs tariffs have been agreed
in the framework of the CIS,” Nazarbayev said.

At the same time, there are quite a lot of times when we are not
satisfied with the EAEC because we are solving issues slowly which
have to be solved [quickly], Nazarbayev said.

[Passage omitted: The Russian, Belarusian, Armenian, Tajik and Kyrgyz
presidents took part in the forum]