MOSCOW, December 21, (ITAR-TASS). Russia’s Foreign Ministry hopes that a Eurasian Economic Union will be created in early 2015, Deputy Foreign Minister Grygory Karasin said.
He spoke at a meeting with participants in the scientific and education project Dialogue for the Sake of Future 2013, organised by the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
Karasin recalled that the talks on the creation of a Eurasian Economic Union by January 1, 2015, had been underway. “We are confident that we will achieve this goal,” he said.
Moscow wants “winds of integration to never counteract each other,” the diplomat said. “For several years Russia has been making efforts to enhance and deepen Eurasian integration.”
Early next week Moscow will host a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, where presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan will take part.
“This meeting will sum up the results of the council’s activity for this year and draw up the guidelines to promote our integration process. This will be a very important meeting,” he said, adding that presidents of other countries, in particular of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, had been invited to the meeting.
“Our course means that integration processes should complement and by no means to contradict each other, what often our colleagues in Brussels do, saying that association of some or other country, be it Armenia, Georgia or Moldova, with the European Union, means automatically that this country cannot join any other integration structure,” Karasin said.
“We were often made nervous by that practice of secrecy and mystery, in which wordings of an association agreement between Ukraine and the EU were being discussed. Partnership envisages transparency and avoidance of situations which bring unpleasant surprises to other neighbours and organizations. We do not do this ourselves and express our concern when others do this,” Karasin added.