DUSHANBE, December 16, 2013, Asia-Plus – An international conference entitled “Russia and Central Asia’s Nations: Political, Economic and Humanitarian Aspects of Eurasian Integration” will take place at Tajik National Library in Dushanbe on December 17.
Organized by the Center for Geopolitical Studies of Russian-Tajik Slavic University (RTSU) under support of the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe, the conference is reportedly expected to bring together some 80 experts and researchers to discuss cooperation between Tajikistan and Russia and problems of implementation of national interests of the Central Asian countries under conditions of geopolitical alternatives.
The conference participants will discuss politics of international actors in the Central Asian region, models of economic development of the Central Asian nations in the 21st century, as well as political, economic and humanitarian dimensions of the Eurasian integration.
The conference will also consider issues related to geopolitical perspectives of the region against the background of Afghan factor after 2014, the source said.
Advisor to the Russian President for Regional Economic Integration Issues, Sergey Glazyev, is expected to attend the conference.
We will recall that according to the results of the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB)’s annual research,
The Integration Barometer
, a total of 75% of population of Tajikistan advocates the decision to join the Customs Union.
As compared to 2012, the survey has shown that public support for the Customs Union and the Single Economic Space (SES) reduced by 7% in Kazakhstan and 5% in Russia. In Belarus the level of support for its membership of the Customs Union and the SES grew from 60% to 65%.
Among non-members, the highest level of public support for possible joining these two structures was expressed in Uzbekistan (77%), Tajikistan (75%), Kyrgyzstan (72%) and Armenia (67%).
The research says that if to combine three factors — economy, politics and culture — the priority vector for a relative majority of the respondent countries is the post-Soviet space and the key factor for this choice is political. Respondents from seven countries (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) expressed their orientation to the post-Soviet space in 2013.
