KYRGYZSTAN FORCED BY WEAKNESS INTO ECONOMIC UNIONS.

President Askar Akayev told an Academy of Sciences plenary meeting yesterday that economic weakness has impelled Kyrgyzstan to join March 29 the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union and the same three countries’ treaty on deeper integration. Akayev stressed that Kyrgyzstan urgently needs the removal of barriers to trade among those countries as early as this year, in order to be able to export its products and generate jobs in Kyrgyzstan. (Interfax, May 7)

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