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Union State official expresses hope that Supreme State Council session will take place before year-end

A representative of the office of the Belarusian-Russian Union State’s state secretary has expressed hope that the Supreme State Council’s session will take place this month.

Originally scheduled for December 1, the Council’s session, which was to be attended by Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was put off indefinitely.

“The new date of the Supreme State Council’s session is not known yet but we will certainly announce it. Hopefully, this will be before the end of the year,” Ivan Makushok, spokesman for the Union State’s state secretary, told BelaPAN.

He noted that State Secretary Pavel Borodin “is working on agenda issues.” “The agenda is being discussed. We in fact have no right to disclose the agenda that will be there,” Mr. Makushok said.

The Belarusian and Russian leaders had been ready to hold the meeting until “one of the sides proposed a number of significant issues for consideration, which require additional discussions and a postponement of the Supreme State Council’s meeting,” Russia’s newspaper Kommersant reported with reference to Mr. Makushok.

Mr. Lukashenka’s spokesman said on Monday that Belarus was not to blame for the postponement of the session.