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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon colleagues,

In spite of this being the run up to the New Year, we must nonetheless conclude our work on matters begun during this year, and which cannot be put off. In particular at the meeting we will talk about the strengthening of cooperation in the military technical sphere among countries which are part of the Commonwealth of Independent States. We need to consider all the components of this partnership.

It was not long ago that we met last, and spoke about this during the meeting of the Security Council and the State Council, where we were able to cover some of the questions arising. I think that today we will focus on fact that the majority of the defence industry in Russia and the CIS were built on the foundation of a unified defence system, that of the former Soviet Union, and are to a great extent still interlinked. That is why we need to consider how best to develop this cooperation especially given that this kind of cooperation will strengthen the defence capabilities of the CIS states as a whole.

This is one of the most important components of what we call collective security. It allows us to collectively repulse all provocations and threats which indeed exist today. Not long ago I was discussing these matters with our colleagues during the informal summit in Kazakhstan, I will speak later about it. I think that this is the area we should concentrate on today.

And of course we need to consider a number of positions. I will outline some of them. The first is an analysis of the tendency of the arms market in the CIS. Here indeed it is important that we emphasise the cutting edge technology, the new generation of technology which is being built in our country, but at the same time that we make sure we are unstinting concerning quality. We spoke about this last time.

Sadly these problems are all too real, and we must not humiliate ourselves in front of our partners by supplying them with military-technical equipment that is of inadequate quality. I have given several instructions and now you will tell me what has been done and what remains to be done.

It is also necessary to perfect the mechanism of military technical cooperation itself. At the start of this month I signed a special decree on this, which simplifies the supply chain for spare parts for Russian produced military and defence technology, as well as for that produced in the Soviet era, which remains on CIS territory.

Finally we need to consider the bilateral programmes of this cooperation. Our companies have enough work, but given the circumstances of the financial crisis as well as production problems, I think that this is also relevant, especially as we have agreed to implement a special financing system for military and defence orders and this is one of the most important areas for those present to pay attention to.