Informal CIS summit to take place in St. Petersburg on Dec 26-27 - executive secretary

MINSK. Dec 20 (Interfax) - An informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) will take place in St. Petersburg next week, CIS Executive Secretary Sergei Lebedev said.

"Not a month goes by that the heads of our states have not met, have not interacted. A very important meeting has just taken place in Minsk. And next week, there will be an equally important informal meeting of the heads of the CIS states in St. Petersburg," the BelTA Belarusian state news agency quoted Lebedev as saying at a meeting of the Council of Permanent Representatives of the CIS Member States to the Statutory and Other Bodies of the CIS in Minsk on Tuesday.

"This meeting will be held on December 26-27 at the invitation of the president of the Russian Federation. And we hope that it will also give an additional impetus to the strengthening of our cooperation," he said.