Agenda of Belarus-Russia Union Supreme State Council meeting includes union programs, roaming cancellation - secretary of state

MINSK. Jan 9 (Interfax) - The agenda of an upcoming meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Belarus-Russia Union State includes union programs, the cancellation of mobile roaming, and other matters, the union's secretary of state, Dmitry Mezentsev, said on Monday.

"I have presented proposals for the Supreme State Council's agenda to the president [Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko]. They have been supported in general. Among other things, this includes outcomes of trade-economic interaction over the reporting period and a report from the governments on what's been done to implement 28 union programs," the Belarusian state news agency BelTA quoted Mezentsev as telling journalists after meeting with Lukashenko.

"It seems to me that cooperation between [Belarusian national and Russian federal] agencies is successful. Naturally, it involves substantive arguments, but they're maintained in a spirit of genuine fellowship and interaction. And certainly, we've proposed an information security concept and are asking for it to be endorsed as a certain answer to the changes in the situation in Eastern Europe," Mezentsev said.

The Supreme State Council meeting agenda will also include some aspects of the Union State's budget and a new format for implementing acts regulating Belarus's and Russia's activities within the union, he said.

"Of course, we'll bring up the cancellation of roaming. This work should be finalized, as there's been an instruction from the presidents. We've also proposed that the presidents consider the union state's symbols. I am convinced that instructions to be issued will allow for defining a flag and an anthem corresponding with the level of relations existing currently between Belarus and Russia, based on collective and public opinion," he said.

The next meetings of the Belarus-Russia Union's Council of Ministers and Supreme State Council "will deal with analyzing the path covered and setting new objectives, which would highlight the depth and scale of integrational allied interaction," he said.