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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Mr President, I am very pleased to see you.

I am glad that we are getting this year off to a start with this informal meeting. Our final meeting last year was in Kazakhstan, amidst your country’s nature, and we begin our contacts this year here outside Moscow. This is actually very symbolic because it reflects the level of our two countries’ relations, our good ties, and our desire to meet regularly to discuss bilateral issues and foreign policy in general.

Last year was a difficult one but we managed nonetheless to achieve results. I notice that our bilateral trade has dropped slightly. In 2008, we had a figure of around $20 billion, but last year it decreased by around 30 percent. I think we have every hope of making up for this decline, however, as our economies are starting to pick up again now. The global financial situation in general has more or less stabilised. We therefore need to plot our course for developing our bilateral cooperation in the economic and humanitarian sectors. We already have a good base in this respect and I think we just need to look now at how to activate a number of economic processes and help our business communities. We have a special business forum, and there are also our annual regional meetings, which all help to invigorate trade between our countries.

This year has special significance. I wish Kazakhstan success as the country holding the OSCE presidency this year. This is an important mission that requires a lot of work and effort. We are ready to help Kazakhstan in every way we can, ready to carry out joint initiatives and work together on resolving even the most complex issues, of which there are still quite a few. We have a whole series of regional forums ahead, at which we will discuss various regional security issues. The challenges we faced last year are still before us today too, unfortunately. I am referring to problems such as crime, drug trafficking, and a number of other problems affecting our region in particular, problems in Afghanistan, in Pakistan. We are conducting a friendly dialogue on all of these different issues. I am very pleased that we are beginning 2010 with this meeting today. Once more, I wish you welcome.

President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev: Thank you for the invitation, Mr President. It is a pleasure to be here and to continue our tradition of informal meetings that help to further reinforce the good-neighbourly alliance between Kazakhstan and Russia and the strong mutual support we provide each other. We have indeed made it through what was a difficult crisis year. We have high hopes for this year, which is beginning with this informal meeting. This year, we will mark the sixty-fifth anniversary of victory [in the Great Patriotic War], and I thank you for the invitation to come here for the celebrations on May 9. We need to show that there must not be any historical revision of the outcome of a war in which our fathers and grandfathers gave their lives for our independence, yours and mine, all of ours.

Coming up on the agenda is the Eurasian Economic Community summit. We are ready to examine your proposals on the summit date, which will take place just before we adopt the Customs Code and Customs Union. Then we have our regional forum scheduled to take place in Ust-Kamenogorsk in September. In 2008, we launched joint innovative technology projects, and work is underway on both sides.

Meanwhile, the world is continuing to undergo far-reaching transformation. With the support from Russia and all of the CIS countries, Kazakhstan has become president [of the OSCE], and we are discussing the idea of holding a summit of OSCE heads of state in Kazakhstan this year. Many countries, though not yet all, have already expressed their support. The Russian Foreign Ministry has already seen the agenda we propose. I think that, given such a summit has not taken place for 11 years now it is time we got together if only to make an assessment of the current state of affairs in security, the economy, and the human dimension.

Dmitry Medvedev: Of course.

Nursultan Nazarbayev: We feel we have support on all of these issues. I think that we always have plenty to discuss, and these kinds of meetings are often more important than official meetings. I am grateful for the invitation and it is a pleasure to come here. We will discuss all of the different issues on our agenda.

Dmitry Medvedev: Thank you.