CIS AND UN INTEND TO DEEPEN COOPERATION

MOSCOW, September 28 (RIA Novosti) - During a meeting at the 59th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, CIS Executive Committee Chairman and Executive Secretary Vladimir Rushailo and UN Under Secretary General Antonio Maria Costa expressed their readiness to continue deepening cooperation between the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the United Nations (UN) in all the spheres, the Executive Committee's press service reported.

"In order to increase the effectiveness of cooperation between CIS and UN working bodies," a spokesman for the committee said, "it was proposed that coordinators from each side be appointed to exchange information, that is, to organize a sort of 'hot line.'"

During the talks, a protocol on cooperation between the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the CIS Executive Committee and the session of the Committee of the Founders and Co-organizers of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Moscow from March 31 to April 2 were discussed.

The committee was approved by the decision of the UN General Assembly. Some ten UN agencies and programs are members. It is expected that the health, justice, interior, finance and education ministers of all CIS countries will attend the committee's session.

The spokesman said that Antonio Maria Costa will be in Moscow in November to attend a session of the Council of the Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists of the Russian Federation at the invitation of the council's head Arkady Volsky.