Minsk hosts CIS ministerial consultations on OSCE issues
MINSK. November 2. KAZINFORM - The CIS ministerial consultations on the OSCE issues were held at the CIS Executive Committee in Minsk on 1 November, BelTA informs.
The meeting was attended by delegations from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Ukraine, which is holding the OSCE Chairmanship in 2013. The participants discussed issues of cooperation between the CIS countries in the OSCE. "Note was taken of the usefulness of interaction of the CIS member states in international organizations, including the OSCE. The participants spoke in favor of the development of cooperation of the CIS Executive Committee and the CIS anti-terrorist center with the OSCE Secretariat,” informed the Department of the CIS Executive Committee.
The participants of the meeting also discussed the issues related to the Helsinki + 40 process and the preparations for the 20th meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Kyiv in early December 2013.
The CIS ministerial consultations, held since 1995, serve as a key instrument of political cooperation in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The major objective of the consultations is to provide a wide exchange of information and opinion on the most important political issues, regional and global policy of mutual interest, with the emphasis on the interests of the CIS countries and coherent joint actions.
During the consultations the participants also analyze the problems that hamper the advancement of joint initiatives in international organizations, consider, if necessary, certain points of draft agendas of the CIS Ministerial Council meetings and communicate the positions of the CIS member states for developing a consensus on the issues under discussion.