Ukraine, Russia intensifying interregional cooperation
2010-11-29 15:04:57
Ukraine and Russia intend to intensify cooperation at the interregional level. The agreement was reached during bilateral talks between Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Lytvyn and Head of the Council of Federation of the Russian Federal Assembly Sergey Mironov in Kyiv on Monday.
As Lytvyn reported at a briefing after the meeting, the parties agreed that a pause in relations between the two countries is inadmissible. "We stressed the unacceptability of the practice when from 2006 to 2009 we had a break in the relationship and not just at the level of parliaments," the Ukrainian parliament speaker said, according to UKRINFORM.
The parties discussed the initiative to return to the practice of holding interregional forums of the border regions of Ukraine and Russia involving deputies of municipal and regional levels, as well as members of parliaments of the two countries. Lytvyn and Mironov stressed the necessity for making decisions at the parliamentary level regarding simplification of border and customs control, because, according to Lytvyn, "this is a great stimulus for the citizens of both countries".
In addition, the meeting discussed issues of humanitarian cooperation between the countries, in particular, joint activities to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko.
In general, while analyzing the results of bilateral negotiations, the Verkhovna Rada speaker said: "We are united in the need to strengthen the activity and effectiveness of our cooperation in a practical dimension. Our cooperation must move from the number of declarations and statements to the quality. We need to get the desired result". He recalled that since the beginning of this year more than 30 Ukrainian-Russian summit meetings have been held.
In turn, Sergey Mironov stressed the importance of regional cooperation for the development of relations between the two countries. According to him, 90 percent of the economic indicators of cooperation between Ukraine and Russia for this year - it is an achievement of interregional cooperation. "Such our regions as Moscow, Tyumen, Saratov region give a very significant contribution,” Mironov underscored.