THE TREATY.

The SSR treaty establishes three supranational, parity-based governing bodies: a Supreme Council comprised of the presidents, prime ministers, and chairmen of parliament as the community’s highest policy-making authority, empowered to take mandatory decisions; a parliamentary assembly, empowered to make decisions by majority vote; and a standing Executive Committee chaired by the prime ministers, empowered to carry out the decisions of the Supreme Council and parliamentary assembly. The two sides will rotate in chairing these bodies for two-year terms. Other than that, the sides retain their standing as subjects of international law and their respective state symbols.

The parties will coordinate foreign policy, foreign trade, and military policies, use military infrastructures on each other’s territories in order to enhance their security, and jointly guard their borders.

The community will have its own budget, drawing on existing state budgets to finance specific joint programs. In the "transitional period" of 1996 to 1997, Russia and Belarus will: synchronize their schedules of economic reforms; introduce uniform anti-trust legislation and industrial support policies, as well as earmark industrial facilities for joint use; establish a common agricultural policy; create a common market of goods, services, capital, and labor; give individuals in either state equal rights to acquire and own property on the other’s territory; unify their economic regulatory legislation, as well as their taxation, social security, and labor legislation; form joint customs services and common energy and transportation systems with uniform tariffs; and unify their budget systems with a view toward introducing a common currency. (Itar-Tass, Interfax, April 2)

Joint Executive Set Up.