Kazakhstan's Astana and Turkmenistan’s Mary to become CIS Culture Capitals of 2012

The capital of Kazakhstan Astana and Turkmenistan city Mary will become Capitals of Culture of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2012, Tengrinews.kz reports, referring to Akorda.kz website. President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev took part in an informal jubilee session of the CIS Head of States Council. The leaders discussed a wide range of issues of multilateral relationships, enhancement of the CIS' role in ensuring greater benefit, welfare and life quality of all the CIS citizens. They also discussed activities of the CIS Observers Mission, development of multilateral economic cooperation and information and communication cooperation. A declaration on the 20th anniversary of the CIS was signed after the session. “20 years ago we signed an agreement on establishment of the CIS in Almaty. The Commonwealth enabled our countries to become stronger. We need the Commonwealth and it is our duty to support and to develop it. We need to adopt a Concept of CIS Development till 2020. The Free Trade Zone agreement is also very important. The coming year will be dedicated to development of information technology cooperation. It is important to continue dynamic development of our relationships in humanitarian sphere, hold youth meetings, bring together intellectual and cultural leaders. We should make sure that we don't loose these ties and everything that we have been accumulating for many years. The EurAsEC (EuroAsian Economic Community) emerged from the CIS, the Customs Union emerged from the EurAsEc and the Common Economic Space emerged from the Customs Union. This shows how valuable the CIS is for us,” Nursultan Nazarbayev said. Kazakhstan President thanked the Tajikistan party for its chairmanship and wished good luck to the president of Turkmenistan.