Share of Belarus in military supplies to Russia ranges 8-15 pct

MOSCOW, March 26 (Itar-Tass) -- The share of Belarus in the supplies
of military products to Russia ranges, according to various estimates,
from 8 percent to 15 percent, the deputy chief of the Duma Committee on
CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots, member of the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Union of Russia and Belarus, Tatiana Moskalkova, told the
daily Krasnaya Zvezda in an interview.
"With the Belarusian military-industrial complex Russia maintains
production and scientific-technical co-operation, which involves 120
plants and design bureaus and 1,600 thousand products of
military-technical purposes," Moskalkova said. In her view, in the whole
variety of bilateral ties military cooperation between Russia and Belarus
is most successful, because "after the collapse of the Soviet Union there
have never been any serious contradictions between the Belarusian and
Russian military."
Over the past few years Belarus and Russia have achieved significant
results in the military-political sphere. Moskalkova emphasized the
jointly agreed position of the leadership of both countries' armed forces
on ways of training and using the regional group of troops and the
creation of the unified regional air defense system.
Moskalkova also said that "the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union
State of Russia and Belarus approved a budget of 4.872 million rubles for
2011.
"Russia contributed 3.167 billion rubles, and Belarus, 1.705 billion
rubles. The priorities of the budget are military-technical cooperation,
law enforcement and security of the Union State."
With regard to the further deepening of integration processes in
relations between Russia and Belarus, here, in Moskalkova's opinion,
priority is attached to the formation of a single economic space."
"In this context, the on-going gradual transition in the bilateral
relations to universal market principles creates the conditions for taking
Russian-Belarusian cooperation to a qualitatively new level and will
facilitate the search for the optimal model of the Union State and ways of
ensuring its defense capability," Moskalkova concluded.