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Vladimir Putin: The Russian delegation is pleased with the results of the work of the Interstate Council of the Eurasian Economic Community. A number of decisions have been made today opening new prospects for the development of our many-sided cooperation.

In the first place, I want to agree with the President of Belarus: we also welcome the coming of Armenia as observer to the Eurasian Economic Community, and we welcome the participation in the Interstate Council meeting of Armenian President Robert Sedrakovich Kocharian. In the future we count on positive work with the Armenian partners.

There were adopted, as has already been said, the 2003–2006 priority lines of Community development. This program is designed to provide guidelines for our near-term work. A great role in its preparation was played by the initiatives advanced in the report of the Chairman of the Interstate Council, Nursultan Abishevich Nazarbayev, which were called ”On the State of Affairs in the Eurasian Economic Community and Proposals for Speeding up Integration Cooperation.“

We thoroughly discussed the forms of coordination among our countries in the course of entry into the WTO. We are convinced that we shall be able to ensure the entry of our countries into the WTO on worthy terms, optimal for our economies and national producers. This we shall be able to do if we act in a coordinated manner.

Decisions were also taken strengthening the legal base of the mechanisms of multilateral cooperation.

In particular, we approved the status of the Court of the Eurasian Economic Community. This is one more step towards the creation of a civilized environment for trade-and-economic cooperation, the interregional collaborative effort and the businesslike partnership as a whole.

We spoke today also of the utilization of the Community's potential for solving the questions of power supply. This problem is particularly relevant to the Central Asian member countries of the Eurasian Economic Community. I reckon that the establishment of a stable energy infrastructure will become one of the decisive factors of onward economic progress.

In conclusion, I want to once again express satisfaction with the results of today's summit. I believe that it has been possible to create an additional basis for the development of many-sided integration in the interests of our countries and peoples.

I would like to sincerely thank our hosts, the President of Tajikistan, for the excellent conditions provided for our work. We know that Tajikistan had been preparing for this event, had worked purposefully, and we see the results. We are grateful and confident that Tajikistan will yet be repeatedly able to use the infrastructure which was created for the organization of our work.

Thank you very much indeed.