‘Eurasian Union not a phantom USSR’
There will be no attempt to resurrect the USSR, Kazakh President Nazarbaev has stated in an article devoted to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s proposal to create a Eurasian Union comprising Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
“The Eurasian Union has every chance of becoming an integral part of the world economic architecture, the formation of which started under the most powerful global financial crisis,” Nazarbaev wrote in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, in which, following the Russian premier and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, he shared his views on Eurasian integration.The Kazakh president stated that the union will be an open structure. He stressed that it is a mistake of some analysts in the West to see the Eurasian project as a simple attempt to revitalize the phantom of the USSR to jointly counter “economic, military, political, information, technological, environmental and other threats.”The main aims of the union are completely different, President Nazarbaev outlined. First, the Common Economic Space, which will be the first step on the way to the union, should become a “territory of innovations and technological breakthrough.” Second, it is thought of as a “firm link between Euro-Atlantic and Asian areas.” In the third place, Nazarbaev believes that the Eurasian Union should be formed as a “self-sufficient financial union which will be a part of the new global currency and financial system.”Among other major goals of the three countries is to convince “neighbors of the viability of our union,” the Kazakh president pointed out. “Then we might extend to far more than three member states.”He also refuted the idea that the Eurasian Union aims to become a “shield against Chinese economic expansion.
