Russia to work out anti-crisis measures with G7, Medvedev supports emergency G8 meeting

Russia Today, October 11, 2008, 7:28

Russia has been invited to take part in discussions on anti-crisis measures with the Group of Seven. The invitation came from the U.S. which currently holds the presidency of the organisation.

Russia's Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin says it reflects the experience the country possesses. He noted that in the past month, Russia has taken a number of steps before other countries followed suit.

"For instance, we made a decision concerning guarantees for the inter-bank market earlier than, say, the UK, which is currently being viewed as a model. Also, our parliament has approved a bill on supporting assets of some banks; this is something that other countries haven’t done yet," Kudrin said.

Meanwhile, finance officials from the world's major economies gathered in U.S. have come up with a five-point plan aimed at battling the economic crisis. Under the plan, the countries pledge to protect major banks from failure by supporting their efforts to raise money from both public and private sources and they also committed to revive the mortgage market.

Medvedev supports emergency G8 meeting

Russia  Today, October 10, 2008, 20:05

President Medvedev has said he supports the idea of calling an urgent G8 summit to discuss measures to overcome the world economic crisis. The announcement came as the leaders of former Soviet states are in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek to talk about their economic future.
The global financial crisis topped the agenda of the summit. It was agreed that the financial ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the CIS, will meet in Moscow in 10 days time to work out ways of tackling the problem.

Also, Medvedev said “an emergency session of the G8 would be a good idea”.

“We are aware of this proposal. I discussed it earlier with the French president at the Evian conference. However, any such session should include not only the G8 members but also other key economies that define the international financial climate.”

To watch Medvedev's interview in Bishkek please follow the link.

The meeting could be attended by China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and "maybe, several more nations," he said.

In Bishkek, the leaders have also mapped out the CIS's economic development till 2020. A number of documents in different areas, including security, countering drug-trafficking and terrorism have been signed.

The regular CIS summit has often been criticised for a lack of substance and for the fact that no concrete decisions are taken by the leaders.

This year the presidents of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are not taking part and the Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili is not at the event after he announced in August that his country is withdrawing from the organisation.

Dmitry Medvedev admitted the CIS has its faults but said it remains useful.

“I don’t think that the CIS is a perfect organisation. And no one does. Today we had tough debates on that. But this is the good thing about it, we have no other platform to discuss these issues,” he said.  

Later, the leaders held a session of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). The economic organisation is formed by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

It is vested with functions relating to the formation of common external customs boundaries of the countries that form it, to the elaboration of unified foreign economic policies, tariffs and prices and to other operational components of the common market.

Despite the spats between some of the member-countries, the CIS leaders are confident in the future of the organisation. Its next summit will take place in Moldova’s capital, Chişinău, in 2009.

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