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CIS leaders hope commonwealth reforms will yield good results

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  • CIS leaders hope commonwealth reforms will yield good results

    CIS leaders hope commonwealth reforms will yield good results
    By Viktoria Sokolova

    ITAR-TASS News Agency
    September 16, 2004 Thursday

    ASTANA, September 16 -- CIS leaders said Thursday they were expecting
    the proposed commonwealth reforms to be effective, ensuring, among
    other things, implementation of the decisions made.

    Commenting at the news conference on the program of reforms, proposed
    by the Kazakh president, Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko noted
    that "the CIS lags behind in its dynamics of the basic indicators
    of activity."

    "The commonwealth leaders should decide within a year on the main
    thing: what they want the CIS to be. Having answered this question,
    it is necessary to begin reforms," Lukashenko said.

    He expressed the hope that "the overhauled CIS will be an organization
    where decisions on the key issues will be made and where they will
    be implemented."

    Armenian President Robert Kocharyan thinks that the main objective of
    the reform is to preserve the bodies, which work, and make the rest
    redundant. "I don't doubt that the CIS has a potential," Kocharyan
    said.

    "The main thing is that all the decisions we make be implemented,"
    Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma stated.

    Nursultan Nazarbayev said the CIS leaders had instructed the foreign
    ministries to consider and make a final decision on the proposed
    reforms within a year. The reforms then will be discussed by the
    CIS leaders.

    The reforms envision the setting up of the CIS Security Council
    comprising the foreign ministers, the defense ministers, and the
    heads of the border services and law-enforcement agencies.

    The Council of foreign ministers will be preserved. It will control
    the Security Council's work.

    The Security Council, to be chaired on rotational basis, will be
    directly subordinate to the Council of CIS leaders.

    Following CIS bodies will be dissolved: the Council of CIS defense
    ministers, its secretariat, the headquarters for coordinating
    military cooperation and the respective councils. In addition, the
    reform proposes to eliminate the Economic Court and the Inter-State
    Statistics Committee.

    The CIS executive committee will cut its staff from 220 to 140. The
    chairman will have two deputies, while the number of the Committee's
    departments will be reduced from nine to five.

    The commonwealth will set up a council of representative under the
    Security and Economic Councils at the level of ambassadors who are to
    be appointed by the heads of states. It will abolish the institute
    of envoys under the Economic Council and the Commission on Economic
    Issues in Moscow, as well as a number of other CIS councils and bodies.

    "I'd like to note," Nazarbayev said, "that the heads of states showed
    little respect for the bodies that had been set up, normally sending
    to work there pensioners or people who needed to land a job. This
    approach did not ensure effective work of our CIS secretariat."

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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