Putin to attend two summits in Kazakhstan
By Viktoria Sokolova

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 15, 2004 Wednesday 12:26 AM Eastern Time

MOSCOW September 15 – Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in
Kazakhstan’s capital Astana for a working visit.

He will attend two summits, of heads of states of the Common Economic
Space (CES) on Wednesday and of CIS presidents on Thursday.

The leaders of the CES countries, or Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and
Belarus, will hold a separate meeting, after which their delegations
will join them.

The presidents will sign joint documents and will hold a news
conference.

A main item on the agenda is discussion of a list of 29 accords
prepared by a high level group and awaiting signing on a priority
basis, the Russian president’s aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass.

“The implementation of these documents is called to lay necessary
conditions for deepening economic integration and staged progress
toward free movement of goods, services, capital and workforce in
the framework of the ‘four’,” Prikhodko said.

The presidents of the four CIS republics will sign an accord on
setting up a commission on tariffs and trade that will be a common
regulating body for the CES countries, he said.

The president wills make a joint statement after the summit.

Prikhodko said Putin would meet the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents, Robert Kocharyan and Ilkham Aliyev, on Wednesday evening.

He is also likely to hold a separate meeting with Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev during his working visit.