ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
March 17, 2007 Saturday 03:08 AM EST

CIS humanitarian cooperation council focused on particular projects

ALMATY, March 16

Almaty has hosted the first meeting of the CIS Humanitarian
Cooperation Council.

Special presidential representatives from the eight member-countries
of the Commonwealth of Independents States, as well as senior
officials for culture, science, and education met here on Friday to
map out plans for 2007-2008, discuss the council’s regulations, and
other procedural issues.

Participants in the meeting focused on the Interstate Humanitarian
Cooperation Fund, which will begin implementing real projects soon.

The council also discussed the possibilities to set up national
offices of the fund. One of their key tasks will be the intensive
drawing of non-budgetary funds for the projects with due account of
peculiarities of each CIS country.

“We have already discussed certain programs, which will be launched
in the near future,” Russia’s special presidential envoy for
humanitarian cooperation with the CIS countries Dzhakhan Pollyyeva,
who was elected as the Council’s chairperson, told Itar-Tass.

“All the necessary legal documents were signed. The financing
support of the projects is being coordinated,” she said.

“The keen interest voiced by CIS representatives and their proposals
showed that they view the fund as a source of new and broader
possibilities and expressed the readiness to work jointly for the
common benefit,” Pollyyeva said.

Chief of the Russian Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography
Mikhail Shvydkoy, who attended the meeting, believes that the main
task of the fund is “to provide young talents with broader
possibilities for further growth.”

“It is necessary to start common projects in the spheres of museums,
theatres, and music,” he said.

“We are setting up a symphony orchestra jointly with the SIC Slavic
countries. This will be the biggest project of 2007,” he stressed,
adding, “We would like to draw in our Kazakh counterparts.
Therefore, the orchestra may turn into the Eurasian Youth Symphony
Orchestra.”

“We are going to establish a broad range of institutions and
agencies, which will select talented young people from former Soviet
republics and promote them on the markets of Eastern and Central
Europe,” Shvydkoy said, adding, “We should do our utmost to give
broader possibilities for young artists and scientists. We will find
the starting capital, and then they can make money themselves.”

“We are lacking performers from Kazakhstan and Georgia. This is a
good project, which is in demand on the market,” he said.

“It is of huge importance to keep up a certain cultural balance, a
balance of languages and humanitarian relations,” Shvydkoy stressed.

The second forum of CIS intellectuals due in Kazakhstan in autumn
will be one of the most important events of this year.

Participants in the Almaty meeting proposed to hold a forum of book
publishers in Armenia and to focus on translators and interpreters
activity in the CIS countries.

They also offered to establish a databank of ideas for the joint
production of films and to develop a program for preserving the CIS
cultural variety and heritage.

“The top priority of the CIS Humanitarian Cooperation Council is to
sustain and develop the cultural community of peoples that has formed
over decades,” famous Azerbaijani artist, the country’s Ambassador
to Russia Polad Bul-Bul ogly said at the meeting.