Before the summit, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov held a meeting with President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. The meeting was held in friendly environment and in spirit of mutual trust and openness. The sides discussed current state and perspectives of Uzbek-Turkmen relations, issues of cooperation of two states within the CIS, UzA reported.

At the session of the Council of the CIS leaders, the participants considered several draft projects directed at deepening regional cooperation in economy and humanitarian, as well as safety spheres.

It is worth to mention that creation of the CIS was created with necessity to keep traditional humanitarian, economic and other relations. The CIS proved its necessity and served as platform for solving issues related to political, economic, and humanitarian cooperation.

The CIS member states have been developing mutual beneficial and multilateral cooperation, as strengthening potential of the organization for last 20 years.

At the summit, Ashgabat summit acknowledged necessity to raise efficiency of existing mechanism of multilateral cooperation within the CIS, as well as improve organizational-legal and institution bases of the Commonwealth to achieve further economic progress and prosperity of population of the CIS.

The CIS leaders expressed their willingness to further strengthen the role of the CIS in the formation of regional and inter-regional relations, becoming of the organization as a viable and effective cooperation mechanism.

It was said that global economic crisis is strengthening and the CIS leaders underlined importance of implementation of potential of the CIS’ economic cooperation to solve social-economic issues. They noted that creation of international transport-communication corridors, development of energy and scientific-cultural partnership, expansion of export opportunities and stimulation of investments are key areas of cooperation development in this area.

The heads of states of the CIS underlined that strengthening of cooperation in cultural-humanitarian sphere is another key area.

The sides underlined expediency to continue joint works on further improving operations of the CIS and legal framework based on international experience. The sides also expressed assurance that countries should strengthen friendship and cooperation among member states.

In the result of the summit, the sides inked a declaration of the heads of the states of CIS on further development of multilateral cooperation. They also signed documents on announcing 2013 as the Year of ecologic culture and protection of environment in the CIS, on implementation of previous agreements on cooperation in the field of communication and information, and others.

In line with the decision of the CIS leaders, Belarus will chair the organization. They also decided to hold next summit of the CIS heads in Minsk in October 2013.