Belarus For Closer Links With Kaliningrad Region. Parties Confer

The city is hosting Russo-Belarussian consultations, which opened today on Belarussian contacts with the Kaliningrad Region, Russia's Baltic coastal enclave. The conferees will debate joint use of the region's seaports for freight shipments and passenger and cargo transits from the enclave to the Russian mainland and back via Belarus and countries bordering on the Kaliningrad Region. Also prominent on the agenda are prospects for a Minsk-Kaliningrad air corridor, and fishing and fish-procession partnership. The Kaliningrad Region presently ranks 8th among Russian regions for trade turnover with Belarus, which exceeded US$100 million last year. Mikhail Khvostov, Belarussian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mikhail Kozik, Deputy Prime Minister, today received Ivan Ivanov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the Russian delegation to the consultations.