MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - A treaty between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus laying the foundations for the Eurasian Economic Union might be signed as soon as May, Kazakhstan's foreign minister said Thursday.
"This year is significant because we are preparing to sign a treaty on the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union," Erlan Idrisov said during a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
"An important meeting will be held in Minsk at the end of this month, and in May we expect to have a trilateral summit in Astana, where the formal work on the document should be completed," Idrisov said.
"This will open up new prospects for cooperation between our countries," he added.
The Eurasian Economic Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is planned to come into existence by next year, further cementing the countries' close economic integration, which are already united by a common free-trade zone. The existing customs union amounts to 85 percent of the total GDP of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an association of former Soviet countries.
