MINSK, August 4. /TASS/. The West’s policy of sanctions and pressure and its campaign of lies forces CIS countries to pool efforts to take information countermeasures, CIS Secretary General Sergey Lebedev said on Friday.

"The policy of sanctions, the unprecedented pressure exerted by the so-called collective West on the CIS countries, first of all on Russia and Belarus, force us to coordinate and consolidate efforts to counteract the campaign of lies unleashed against us in the information space," the BelTA agency quoted him as saying at a joint meeting of the council of the heads of government and public broadcasting companies of the CIS countries and the administrative council of the CIS Interstate Information Pool.

He pointed to the meeting’s topicality amid the current situation in the world and in the CIS countries. "You see lots of lies and hatred in the Western media reports about our countries," Lebedev said. "They reveal the West’s unabashed zeal to disunite us, to set us at odds with each other, to break out Commonwealth."

"It is important now as never before to preserve the unity of the CIS countries," he stressed. "I can say that during their summits, heads of our states discuss the situation in the world and within the CIS openly and sincerely. They are determined to spare no effort to strengthen the CIS, to find solutions to the existing problems."

He stressed the importance of the mass media for the establishment of a common information space. "Your Council is a really unique platform for the exchange of views and the elaboration of measures to promote friendship and cooperation between our countries and create a common humanitarian space in the CIS," he added.