MINSK – Russia and Belarus will retain their sovereignty in the process of their integration within the Union, Russian Ambassador to Belarus Dmitry Mezentsev said.
“Nobody will ever allow steps that somehow violate the principles of sovereignty and independence of our two countries. We are talking today about bringing our national laws in the socioeconomic field closer together,” Mezentsev told journalists in Minsk on Sept. 20, in commenting on the possible publication of an integration program blueprint.
“The action program is a document signed by the heads of government,” he said. “I don’t see reasons for idle talk today, because the conversation is not about steps that may somehow call into question the successful work on improving the governance systems which is being done now both in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus,” Mezentsev said.
The bilateral working group is continuing the finalization of the draft program to fill its roadmaps with content, he said.
“The prime ministers instructed the ministries concerned and the respective ministers to work hard and compare notes on a weekly basis at the negotiations on Sept. 6. This is precisely the pattern that representatives of the government institutions are following now in their work,” Mezentsev said.
Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anatoly Glaz said earlier on Sept. 20 that a fuss around the Belarusian-Russian integration program was absolutely unreasonable.
“The agitation [around the integration program] is totally unwarranted. There are absolutely no reasons for that,” Glaz said.
“Allow me to remind you of the project’s name: the program of actions of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation toward implementing the Union State Treaty. This is the essence of the document. There is nothing there to exceed the limits of the Union State Treaty of 1999,” he said.
As reported earlier, Kommersant on Sept. 16 published a summary of a Belarusian-Russian integration program, which Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Rumas and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev initialed on Sept. 6.
Kommersant suggested that this level of integration is higher than that existing within the European Union, and “at the economic level, the establishment of a confederative state starting 2022 is actually planned.”
