Transcript of the start of the talks:

Sergei Sidorsky: Mr Putin, members of the Union State's Council of Ministers, and participants in our meeting, on behalf of our Government I am happy to welcome you here on hospitable Belarusian land.

Regular meetings of our Union Government have been actively promoting bilateral economic cooperation and integration.

Recently, we have stepped up and streamlined cooperation between Russian and Belarusian ministries and Governments. At the meeting on June 27, we decided to draft the timetable of the meetings of the Union State's branch functional bodies, board and ministries. We are very grateful to you, Mr Putin, for supporting this initiative.

I am pleased to say that a number of meetings have been held on the transportation system, and by the board of the Ministries of Emergencies. I would like to thank Mr Putin for the decisions which were made by the previous Union Government.

I would also like to thank you for instructing the Russian Government on August 18, 2008 to rent us Pavilion N18 at the National Exhibition Center. On October 10, we will inaugurate the permanent national exhibition of the Republic of Belarus there. Our aim is to develop continuous bilateral trade. I would like to invite all of you, colleagues, to take part in the inauguration of this exhibition, if you have the time. We will maintain the pavilion at top level. This will be a permanent display, and we hope that it will reveal the commercial potential of our economic relations and increase trade to 845 billion Russian rubles (a growth of more than 60%) this year. Next year, we are planning to boost it even more.

I would like to inform Mr Putin and the Government that we are completing the ratification of the agreement on settling questions related to the Union State's property.

This October, Belarusian Parliament will review this issue. I would like to note that Belarus and Russia have submitted 96 modifications of the national tariff regulation systems. We have just discussed this question with President Alexander Lukashenko. I am happy to inform the members of the Russian and Belarusian Government that we have standardised them by 95.6%.

Experts have told me that some positions have not yet been agreed upon, that is, several thousand out of 10,000, and they are having a minor effect on our trade. We could decide to standardise them, but we looked at the Kazakhstan-Belarus-Russia triangle. With Kazakhstan, we have standardised tariffs at the level of 40%-50%. But we are ready for further steps towards standardisation. I have already mentioned them to the President, and we discussed whether Russia is ready for a customs union. Our Union State could be used as the foundation for drafting a single customs tariff in the EurAsEC space.

The format of our meetings has shown that we can quickly resolve major cooperation issues both at bilateral meetings and the Union Government's sessions. I would like to thank Igor Shuvalov and Andrei Kobyakov, whom we have put in charge of systemic cooperation. They regularly meet to discuss concrete questions, and set tasks for ministries and departments. I believe that they could tell us here which questions they consider to be important for us to discuss.

Mr Putin, colleagues, we think that the world financial crisis, deployment of US missile defence components in Eastern Europe, and departure from a number of the WTO entry priorities require that Belarus and Russia should put their economic coordination on a new level. We could offer our colleagues to discuss these issues. I have just mentioned them in your presence, Mr Putin. This is Belarus's initiative.

We believe it is possible to discuss these questions at a meeting of the Supreme State Council on November 3.

We would like to discuss specific questions with a view to promoting our relations.

Mr Putin, thank you for finding the time to visit Minsk.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much.

Mr Sidorsky, colleagues, on the whole we are satisfied with the development of our bilateral economic ties. As it was mentioned earlier, our trade has increased by 60%. This is a record for Russia compared to our trade with all other partners, and this is probably natural. I mean special relations between Russia and Belarus, our allied relations.

We know well that we do not reach all the goals which we set ourselves. I don't think this is a failure. The main point is that we see these goals, we formulate them, and generally move towards their implementation. This is why we have reached such results in trade. Cooperation between our companies, individual industries, and whole economies has been on the upsurge.

You have just mentioned the standardisation of customs tariffs. I consider this very important. We are planning to build a genuine Customs Union, which would also include Kazakhstan. This would help us compete with other countries and associations.

In conditions of the currency crisis which is gripping the United States and which has already spread to Europe, as we now see, you should also closely watch the events and respond to them quickly. In this context, I would like to mention our interest in further deepening of currency integration. We could create a currency pool, and make better use of the Russian ruble in settling mutual accounts, among other things.

We are cooperating on a big scale in many spheres, including energy, and we will probably also talk about the latter today. I have already stated it for the record in Russia. It is not clear why we are still settling accounts in US dollars when implementing big energy projects. Meanwhile, we are well aware of the current problems in the US economy and currency system. In this context, it makes sense for us to discuss what I have said.

Let me repeat that this is important for the Russian national currency, and we do not remove from our agenda the issue of establishing a common currency in some historical perspective. This will help us make progress in this direction, and we will naturally use all the required ‘security cushions,' with Russian and Belarusian national interests guaranteed.

I would like to thank you for the work you have done. I am convinced that we will continue moving ahead. We have a big agenda, more than 20 items, and each of them is important. Resolution of each of these questions will help us move forward. This is what I wanted to say at the beginning. I think we could now concentrate on the agenda.

Thank you for your attention.