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EAU to be union of sovereign states

“That was an Iinternational Organisation; let us put this building in order, and we shall locate our first body there” - Lukashenko

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, November 19 (Itar-Tass) — A Euro-Asian Union will be “a union of sovereign states with supra-national bodies” which will perform “around 175 functions”, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Saturday in an interview with the Vesti v Subbotu programme of the Russia-1 TV channel.

According to the president, such a prospect is examined “for the first time since the Soviet times”. “It was dreadful in the past to speak about supra-national bodies; many states rushed away from such an idea, but a certain time has passed, and we have come to this,” Lukashenko noted.

Speaking of a preferable place for locating a EAU headquarters, the Belarussian president said that, in his opinion, preference should be given to Moscow. “I proposed your premier and president – I was the first to propose this to Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev: Let us take this book (former building of the CMEA was built in the form of an open book); It is a good building”.

“That was an Iinternational Organisation; let us put this building in order, and we shall locate our first body there – there will be no seizure,” Lukashenko noted.

A Euro-Asian Union has not been set up for the time being. “We agreed to come by 2015 to the creation of a union, presupposing closer integration and intertwining of the economies, he said. The Belarussian president did not preclude a chance that “we shall possibly bring closer a time of forming the Euro-Asian Union”, having in mind the end of 2013.

“But I cannot guarantee you that a single passport-visa regime will be there, as I should like to have. I don’t thing that we shall succeed in bringing closer Kazakhstan to what Belarussians have so as to do away with border crossings and borders,” Lukashenko said. “The main thing is to go. What is the value of the present day? Sure, we have not studied everything in detail, but we started moving.

“But when there is movement – there is a definite momentum, since as we believe the movement is in the right direction – momentum is positive. This momentum will not give us a chance to go in the reverse direction; we shall come all the same to this better thing,” concluded the Belarussian president.

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