Putin Calls for Union State with Belarus

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Putin Calls for Union State with Belarus

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday in Belarus's capital Minsk that the course toward creation of a union state is the strategic direction of Russian-Belarussian relations, the Itar-tass news agency reported.

Putin made the statements at a session of a council created to pursue closer cooperation between the two former Soviet republics.

The president said Russia and Belarus have entered a very important new stage of creating the union state. He said he hoped that the two sides would soon finish the drafting work of fundamental documents of the union state.

Putin also stressed that the countries must work faster to introduce the Russian ruble as a single currency. Putin and his Belarussian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko declared Monday in Minsk that they are committed to introducing the single currency by January 2005, as previously agreed.

The initial union treaty between the two countries was signed in 1996 by Lukashenko and Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

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