EX-SOVIET LEADERS AIM FOR EURASIA CUSTOMS UNION
Agence France Presse — English
June 23, 2006 Friday 8:56 PM GMT
Ex-Soviet leaders meeting in the Belarus capital on Friday discussed
setting up a vast customs union between the frontiers of Europe and
Asia by 2007.
"We have to decide on… the creation of a full customs union,"
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said at the start of the
meetings held in the country’s new grandiose national library.
Lukashenko was hosting two Moscow-led groupings of former Soviet
republics — the Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) and the Collective
Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).
"By the end of this year, we will prepare all the legal bases for a
customs union," Uzbek President Islam Karimov said at a news conference
after the meetings.
Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev said that "the draft laws
are ready," adding that some 80 percent of tariffs among EEC member
states have already been agreed.
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan are all members
of the EEC, which was set up in 1999. Uzbekistan is in the process
of joining.
Grigory Rapota, the EEC’s secretary-general, said a customs union
would boost overland rail trade between South-East Asia and Europe,
generating economic gains for transit countries.
The EEC, he said, was planning direct container transport between
the Chinese city of Urumqi and the Belarussian city of Brest —
on the border with Poland.
The Eurasia Development Bank — a project funded by Russia and
Kazakhstan with start-up capital of 1.5 billion dollars — would
also help boost economic links when it starts work later this month,
he added.
But talks on the customs union have snagged over the question of
joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) — Kyrgyzstan is already a
member, while Russia and Kazakhstan are both candidates for accession
to the global trade body.
"It’s difficult. Important economic interests for each country are
involved," Rapota said, highlighting difficulties on agreeing common
customs laws, tariffs and rules on investment.
In a final statement after the EEC meeting, heads of state agreed
to "guarantee the interests of member states acceding to the WTO
(World Trade Organisation), taking into account the creation of a
customs union."
Also Friday, members of the CSTO met for talks aimed at boosting
the group’s international profile but failed to agree on setting up
measures for mutual defence.
"We’re sorry we didn’t manage to do this today but the talks will
continue," Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said at the news
conference following the meeting.
A draft final statement had called for "provision of emergency
military-technical assistance to CSTO member states where there
is a security threat or against whom an act of aggression has been
committed."
The CSTO, set up in 1992 to focus on anti-terrorism and
counternarcotics programmes, is made up of Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan was accepted as a full member at the meeting on Friday.
The group’s secretary general, Nikolai Bordyuzha, called in an
interview with the Belarussian Military newspaper for the CSTO to
organise "military, peacekeeping and collective reaction forces for
emergency situations."
Bordyuzha also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
had failed to respond to his offer for cooperation from the grouping
of ex-Soviet states.
"It doesn’t bother us. The CSTO is quite a developed organisation
with significant contacts. Our priority, I note, is the UN, not NATO,"
Bordyuzha said.
As an example of a successful CSTO project, Bordyuzha referred to
an anti-drugs initiative called "Channel," set up in 2004 and now
including countries such as China, India, Pakistan and the United
States.