President Putin expressed hope that the High-Level Group would eliminate all the obstacles on the four countries’ way to creating a common economic space, in particular, as regards coordinating the countries’ positions on WTO entry. The Group had prepared a draft concept of the common economic space and developed ways of establishing it.
The High-Level Group was tasked to draft documents for establishing a common economic space of the four countries. It comprised Deputy Prime Ministers of Belarus, Andrei Kobyakov; Kazakhstan, Karim Masimov; Russia, Viktor Khristenko; and Ukraine, Nikolai Azarov.