MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti) - The presidents of Russia and Kazakhstan will meet Saturday to discuss bilateral cooperation and international problems, as the Kazakh president assumes the chairmanship in the Commonwealth of Independent States' top body.
Nursultan Nazarbayev will officially take over at the top of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS, a loose union of former Soviet republics, from Vladimir Putin at their meeting in the resort town of Sochi on Russia's Black Sea coast, a Putin aide said.
Sergei Prikhodko also said Putin would announce Saturday that he had invited the Kazakh president to this summer's G8 summit, slated to be held in St. Petersburg July 15-17.
A Kremlin source said the two leaders are also set to discuss trade and energy security, as well as prospects for other regional security organizations.
"Detailed consideration will be given to ways to increase trade turnover, deepen interaction in the fuel and energy sector, including transportation of Kazakh oil through Russia, collaboration in civilian nuclear energy, broader cooperation in various economic spheres, and also establishing military and military-technical cooperation," the source said.
Bilateral trade turnover between the two countries increased almost 20% in 2005, to $9.7 billion. The source said turnover in the first three months of 2006 increased 16% year on year, to $2.3 billion.
As well as the CIS - currently in something of a crisis as Georgia and Ukraine consider their future in the organization - the two presidents will discuss other regional economic and security organizations as part of the drive to create a Common Economic Space (CES), the source said.
The CES is designed to ensure free movement of goods, services, capital, and people between its member states, and ultimately to abolish tariffs and harmonize markets in the key areas such as transportation and energy. The organization, agreed on in principle in early 2003 by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, the four largest CIS nations, would be open for other countries to join and could eventually lead to a single currency.
Putin and Nazarbayev will also discuss security in Central Asia, in the wake of recent unrest in the region.
On May 12, a group of six gunmen shot its way through the Tajik-Kyrgyz border killing a number of civilians before being surrounded in an operation that left at least six Kyrgyz soldiers dead and nine wounded.
