Moscow and Minsk celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Union State.
Yesterday Russia and Belarus set a record for the length of a top-level bilateral talk. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke for more than eight hours, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the Union State. The talks were crowned with the signing of an agreement on military-technical cooperation, which benefits Minsk. Taking the offensive, the Belarusian delegation not only asked for more concessions but also demanded that Russian law be changed to suit its interests. Kommersant correspondent Vladimir Solovyev reports about this event.
Yesterday's meeting of the State Council of Russia and Belarus seemed to be as endless as the process for establishing the Union State. Moscow and Belarus have been building it for 10 years but the end of construction is nowhere in sight. The presidents began their talks at 1 p.m. and finished them when it was already dark outside. There are usually two reasons for talks to continue for such a long time: when close friends meet or when the sides cannot reach agreement. The first reason is not likely if only because Putin attended the talks and would remember how Lukashenko had accused the prime minister two months before of impeding integration and military cooperation between the two countries.
Nobody knows whether grievances were recalled at the talks. However, when Medvedev finally appeared before the press, he admitted that he had a "quite emotional exchange of opinion" with his Belarusian counterpart. Judging by Lukashenko's facial expression and his smooth tone of voice, some of these emotions were positive.
"This meeting is special! It was timed along with the 10th anniversary of the signing of the treaty on establishing the Union State," Lukashenko said. He noted that the decisions made at the meeting required a revision of the approach to relations between the presidents and prime ministers. The Belarusian president suggested that Medvedev speak about these decisions.
"Ten years flew past!" Medvedev began in a crisp voice. "We have done so much but there are many things that we have not done yet." He said that Moscow and Minsk had made substantial progress in "coordinating customs policy." Medvedev said that this process would be crowned with the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan which would begin working on January 1, 2010. However, it became clear that this achievement has an aspect which is not very pleasant for Russia but beneficial for Belarus. Medvedev mentioned it in passing: "We have decided to give a positive response to different requests (of the Belarusian side – Kommersant) regarding cooperation in the oil sector."
The president did not go into details. A member of the Russian delegation explained this instead of him on the condition of anonymity. He said that Russia agreed to preserve preferential duties on Russian oil supplies to Belarus. "Belarus wanted to reduce the current rate but we agreed to keep it at the same level rather than raise it. This is our concession to them," he said. As Kommersant has established, Moscow is still reluctant to loan Minsk $500 million and 100 billion roubles. Its decision to preserve the status quo on oil duties is already considered a step forward for Belarus.
Yesterday's agreement on military-technical cooperation is a real success for Belarus. Its inexpressive name conceals something unprecedented in relations between Moscow and Minsk in the sphere of defence. Kommersant sources in both delegations said unanimously that each side would give the other side weapons and hardware in the same package as it is using for its own armed forces. It is clear which side will supply weapons and which one will receive them. It is no accident that after the talks Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov received the Order of Friendship from Alexander Lukashenko.
After coordinating the signed documents (which took five hours), they continued discussing other urgent issues. It was revealed that a real drama unfolded behind the closed doors. One of the participants in the struggles at the negotiating table had to rush out to catch his breath. He told Kommersant that the Belarusian delegation decided not to stop at the agreements that had been reached and sought out success. . "We had to explain to our colleagues from Belarus one and the same thing: Minsk cannot permanently live on Russian subsidies without offering us anything that is of interest to us in their economy," he said with indignation. Judging by how open he was, he really had had enough of it. "Belarusian officials held their discussion of issues according to the scenario they had drafted before. They interrupted an extensive discussion with endless demands of loans, benefits and exceptions," the Kremlin official complained. "These requests were repeated a dozen times and made the discussion messy," he concluded.
According to the official, the Belarusian side was carried away by zealous negotiations and started bringing up really new ideas. It suggested what it called long overdue changes in Russian law. "They suggested that we should change our law on the Central Bank! This is beyond the limit!" the furious official said. "I was stunned by the truly saintly patience of our president and prime minister. We are ready for integration and are even prepared to sustain some losses but we cannot mend the Belarusian budget that is full of holes because of that country's specific economic model."
In the meantime, the Belarusian side was not embarrassed in the least by what caused indignation in the Russian delegation. Having come to the press after a lengthy negotiating marathon, Lukashenko called the Union State all but the highest form of integration in the post-Soviet space: "I would like to assure the Russian people, and, in particular the Russian media, that they have a reliable defender on the Western borders. We will not spare you anything," Lukashenko promised. At this point, one of the Russian negotiators whispered quite loudly: "And what do you have to offer?"
By Vladimir Solovyev