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The meeting was timed to coincide with the 20^th anniversary of the signing of the Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and the 20^th anniversary since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan. Following the meeting, the two presidents issued a joint statement.

Later, Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev attended a gala concert at the Bolshoi Theatre.

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Beginning of meeting with President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, we saw each other just recently at the Russia-Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum

I am very pleased that you have accepted our invitation and come to Moscow to continue our discussions on developing our bilateral political, trade and economic ties, to address issues pertaining to further integration – deepening integration – not just between our countries but throughout the entire post-Soviet space overall. We will have an excellent opportunity today to mark the anniversaries of major events, and this evening, we will discuss all these issues in more detail in an informal setting.

Welcome.

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev: Thank you, Mr President, for your invitation.

I want to once again wish you a happy birthday. I wish you good health and hope you will be successful in carrying out all your plans for Russia.

We are marking the 20^th anniversaries of our diplomatic ties and our framework agreement on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance. At our discussion we came to realise that our relations serve as a model within the CIS. Questions of energy, space exploration, and our bilateral relations, as well as the Common Economic Space – this is just a short, brief list of our joint work and issues we are addressing.

The fact that 3,000 businesses are operating in Russia with participation by Kazakhstani capital, as well as 1,700 enterprises in Kazakhstan with Russian capital, speaks for itself. So we want to renew this major conversation on all the issues we just discussed, adapting to current needs and moving forward toward creating the Common Economic Space between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

This is our noble goal; we must resolve this matter properly, without rushing, in order to foster a true, integrated association, the best in the post-Soviet space.

Thank you for your attentive attitude toward all the matters that come up between our countries. We discussed this in Pavlodar, and talked it over today. I think that our cooperation and alliance will continue developing in a positive direction.

Vladimir Putin: You know, what makes me particularly happy is that both Kazakhstan and Russia are oil and gas producers, but the structure of our trade does not have very many mutual purchases and sales of these products traditionally key to our economies; and still, our trade is growing, having hit a record last year. Twenty plus billion dollars – ultimately, that is a very good indicator. It speaks to the fact that everything pertaining to integration is working very efficiently.

Nursultan Nazarbayev: Twenty-five billion dollars in turnover, and we have already reached half that in the first six months of this year. After the creation of the Customs Union trade has been growing by 30 percent per year. This is excellent and hadn’t happened before.

New companies are emerging and cooperation is increasing, including in the military and technical sector. So we are very grateful. In Pavlodar, we discussed the issue of innovative, scientific and technical collaboration. This is very major, modern cooperation.

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