Experts join talks of presidents at CIS summit (adds)

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA, September 16 — The second round of talks began at the CIS
summit that opened in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on Thursday.

CIS delegations have joined the talks of presidents and prime
ministers.

The signing of joint documents and a wrap-up new conference are
planned after discussions.

The struggle against terrorism centres the summit’s agenda.

The CIS presidents will make a statement condemning “the terrorist
attacks of unprecedented cruelty and cynicism on civilian facilities”,
the Russian president’s aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass.

“The heads of state describe the terrorist attacks as criminal and not
unjustifiable regardless of their motives, wherever and by whoever
they are committed. The statement expresses the determination to
fight all forms of terrorism as the UN Charter warrants it,” he said.

“Several documents on which necessary intra-state procedures have
been fulfilled are proposed for signing by the CIS presidents and
CIS foreign ministers without discussion,” he said.

Prikhodko cited documents that change and amend the frame agreement
between the CIS Council of heads of state and the CIS Council of
Heads of Government, and provisions on the Economic Concil and the
Council of Foreign Ministers.

The presidents also will make an address “to peoples of the CIS state
members and the international community in connection with the 60th
anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War”.

An official of the Russian president’s administration told Itar-Tass
that several of the CIS states had put forward a collective
initiative of including in the agenda of the 59th session of the
UN General Assembly a point on announcing May 8-9 Days of Memory
and Reconciliation.

The presidents will be informed at the CIS summit about the progress
of the initiative.

The summit is to pass a decision on sending CIS observers to Ukraine’s
president elections and on declaring 2006 a year of memory of the
Chernobyl tragedy. The nuclear accident at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear
power plant occurred on April 26, 1986.

Besides, the CIS presidents are to decide on sending observers of the
Commonwealth of Independent States to elections to the Belarussian
National Assembly’s house of representatives and to a referendum on
President Alexander Lukashenko’s running for the third term. Belarus
has proposed the observer missions.

One of items on the summit’s agenda is election of a chairman and
deputy chairman the CIS Economic Court.

The status of the court is laid down by an accord signed by Russia,
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan in 1992. These states elect two judges each to the CIS
Economic Court based in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

Its judges are elected for ten years.

The chairman and deputy chairman of the Economic Court are elected
by the judges by a majority vote and approved by the CIS Council of
Heads of State for five years.

The main task of the Economic Court is to ensure universal use of
accords of CIS members.

In the opinion of experts, the Economic Court should become an
effective mechanism for promotion of free trade.