MINSK, 15 October (BelTA) – The leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States participating countries adopted a statement in connection with the 30th anniversary of the CIS at the online meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council on 15 October, BelTA has learned.
“Thirty years ago, in the period of dramatic geopolitical changes, the Agreement establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States, the protocol to it and the Alma-Ata Protocols were signed. The establishment of the Commonwealth contributed to the formation of legal and organizational foundations of mutually beneficial integration between the newly independent states, the preservation and improvement of their economic, humanitarian, cultural and historical ties based on common interests, mutual trust and respect,” the document reads.
Today the CIS is a regional interstate organization that promotes political, economic, humanitarian and other partnerships based on genuine equality. It is also a unique dialogue platform that reconciles the interests of its member states.
“Our common task is to make the most of the potential of the Commonwealth, strengthen its positions in the international arena and facilitate its dynamic development. Viewing trade and economic cooperation as a key factor of closer economic integration and sustainable development of the CIS member states, we declare our commitment to creating an enabling environment for effective economic cooperation, full-fledged operation of the free trade zone, transition to deeper economic integration. In order to improve the welfare of citizens, we consider it necessary to invest efforts in stable economic growth through the development of a green economy, digitalization, industrial cooperation, a widespread use of innovations, the development of international transport corridors, the integrated and rational use of available natural and economic resources, support for small and medium-sized businesses, facilitating employment and creating favorable conditions for citizens of the CIS countries working in the CIS member states and also bolstering cooperation between the business communities, expanding partnerships within the framework of the global economic system,” the document reads.
Humanitarian cooperation traditionally remains one of the most effective means of building trust and promoting mutual understanding among the CIS member states. The CIS leaders have reaffirmed readiness to develop humanitarian cooperation and to take humanitarian ties to a qualitatively new level on the basis of common humanistic values in the name of peace, friendship, good-neighborliness, inter-ethnic and inter-faith harmony, stability and conflict-free development of interstate relations.
One of the fundamental tasks of cooperation between the CIS countries in the humanitarian dimension is the preservation of the memory of the common Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. "We strongly oppose the attempts to falsify history, revise the results of the Second World War and to glorify Nazism which go against the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. We emphasize that the facts of deportation and extermination of the civilian population of the USSR by the Nazis and their accomplices established by the Tribunal should be regarded as the genocide of the peoples of the Soviet Union," the statement said.
The CIS pays much attention to cooperation in ensuring the security, law and order, which contributes to countering modern threats. “At the same time, we see a continued increase in factors negatively affecting international security, including attempts to disregard generally recognized principles and norms of international law, international terrorism, extremism, transnational organized crime, illicit drug production and trafficking, the use of information and communication technologies for terrorist and other criminal purposes, other transnational threats, including epidemiological ones. Reaffirming the key coordinating role of the United Nations, we declare our readiness to cooperate in countering the whole range of contemporary challenges and threats. We emphasize the need for cooperation to strengthen comprehensive global stability as the basis for equal and indivisible security for all,” the CIS leaders said in the statement.
They confirmed the aspiration to jointly promote the interests of the CIS member states, to coordinate approaches in solving major global and regional problems based on commitment to the purposes and principles enshrined in the UN Charter, the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the UN Charter.
The CIS leaders also expressed commitment to establishing a just multipolar world order, recognizing the diversity of development paths of states on the basis of universal human values. “At the same time, we are concerned that the progressive development of our countries is complicated by the negative impact of a number of external factors, including the growth of global instability, aggravation of geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry, unilateral restrictive measures applied by individual states that run counter to international law, attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and a significant impact on international processes of the long-term pandemic of coronavirus infection (COVID-19),” the statement says.
