Top CIS Diplomats To Meet In Samarkand On April 14 - General Secretary

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Foreign Ministers Council is scheduled to hold a meeting on April 14 in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, and most of the top diplomats have confirmed their attendance, the CIS General Secretary Sergey Lebedev said on Thursday.

MINSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2023) The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Foreign Ministers Council is scheduled to hold a meeting on April 14 in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, and most of the top diplomats have confirmed their attendance, the CIS General Secretary Sergey Lebedev said on Thursday.

"A meeting of the Council of CIS Foreign Ministers will take place in Samarkand on April 14. Most countries' foreign ministers have already agreed to come to Samarkand. Uzbekistan has also stated it is ready to host the meeting," Lebedev told reporters before the CIS Council of Permanent Representatives Meeting began in Minsk.

Lebedev announced that on the day before the meeting, on April 13, foreign ministers of Russia and Central Asian CIS members will meet the top diplomats of China and Pakistan to discuss neighboring Afghanistan. It shows that the CIS cooperates closely with other regional organizations and countries on a number of international issues, said Lebedev.

The diplomats will discuss the foreign ministries' consultations results, boosting CIS foreign ministries' cooperation, and establish CIS youth capitals for the next three years.

The official agenda will be defined during the upcoming Permanent Representatives' meeting.

The secretary also noted that later in the day, CIS Permanent Representatives would review implementation of the plan to improve collaboration between the CIS Executive Committee and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

"I want to tell you, this cooperation is rather active and effective. The EEU leaders attend our economic events. For example, the recent CIS Economic Forum in Moscow... that was attended by the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Chairman, Mikhail Myasnikovich," Lebedev said.

He said that the CIS and EEC have established good contacts at a working level and they also cooperate at the expert level.

The EEU is an economic union of some former Soviet countries: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. it was officially established in 2015 in order to arrange commerce policies, logistics, trade regulation and other economic issues among the member states. The EEC is the EEU's main executive authority governing the Union's day-to-day issues as well as implementing major decisions.