3 August 2007: Irkutsk

The first meeting of the recently founded Council of Eurasian Economic Cooperation Community (EurAsEC) on cooperation in the nuclear energy sector finished in Angarsk on Friday.

The council’s members from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan attended the meeting.

The Russian Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy’s deputy director Nikolai Spassky was elected its chairman and the chief of Kazakhstan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources’ nuclear energy department, Tomur Zhantikln was appointed deputy chairman.

The council has founded its rules of procedure and a work plan for 2007-08.

It also reviewed proposal for cooperation in specific areas of mutual interest, in particular the training of personnel for work in the nuclear energy sector.

The council also heard information about the establishment of an international center for uranium enrichment at the Angarsk chemical electrolysis plant.

The participants in the meeting visited the plant.

“We expect much from the work of the council,” Spassky told reporters.

“In final analysis, it is all about the integration of nuclear sectors of Russia and our nearest partners, including the EurAsEC states, for peaceful purposes. This task is dictated by the life, and similar tendencies of amalgamation and globalization of the nuclear sector are occurring in the whole world. So there is the hope that the council’s work will help development of the processes that are already occurring in the CIS space,” Spassky said.

Source: Inter-Tass