Lukashenko suggests updating CIS development policies
DUSHANBE/MINSK. Sept 28 (Interfax) - The CIS countries have no common vision or general plan for the development of the Commonwealth, and they have failed to create a full theoretical model and a practical strategy for the countries' economic integration, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.
"We have begun revising the strategy for the further development of the CIS to adapt the Commonwealth to modern realities," Lukashenko said at the CIS summit in Dushanbe on Friday.
He suggested "tasking the governments with updating the economic part of this document. It could become the ideological foundation for the fuller use of the technological and investment potential of the Commonwealth. We need to tie it to the work on the strategy for the CIS' economic development beyond 2020 in a reasonable way," Lukashenko was quoted as saying by the state news agency BelTA.
He also proposed intensifying preparations for the signing of an updated memorandum on deepening interaction between the EEC and the CIS Executive Committee. "This document will enable our partners in the Commonwealth to promptly receive full information about the development of Eurasian integration, objectively assess the prospects of increasing cooperation in priority areas," Lukashenko said.
He also said he believes that interaction within the CIS should be synchronized with integration in Greater Eurasia, including through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). "We need to identify areas for bringing together our countries' capacities with large international projects, primarily for the Silk Road project. Belarus is already participating in it, developing the Chinese-Belarusian Great Stone Industrial Park," he said.
Lukashenko called for unity and joint actions within the CIS given the disintegration of the current system of international trade.
"We see the system of international trade, which took decades to build, being unilaterally destroyed at the instigation of the West. The use of illegal mechanisms is becoming the norm, which puts our economies in a vulnerable positon," Lukashenko said.
"Only by acting together can we successfully take on these new challenges. On the one hand, we need to pool our efforts to protect our interests jointly on the global market. On the other hand, to intensify mutual trade and investment and broaden industrial cooperation. In general, to respond with consolidation and an increase of the role of the Commonwealth as a regional player," he said.