Members of Russian Parliament exhort Belarussian legislators to implement economic reforms

Members of Russia's Federal Assembly (Parliament) called on their Belarussian counterparts to help standardize Belarussian and Russian legislation and to implement specific reforms. Summing up the results of the December 13 parliamentary hearings, which were held in Minsk and were devoted to the prospects of the development of Russian-Belarussian economic cooperation, Deputy State Duma Speaker Vladimir Lukin stressed that Belarus should opt for reforms, and that nothing else would open up bilateral-integration opportunities. (The State Duma is the Russian Parliament's lower house -- Ed.) Those, who took part in the hearings, drafted recommendations for the Belarussian National Assembly, suggesting that the latter okay a package of top-priority documents that would make it possible to merge Belarussian and Russian legislation. Moreover, it's intended to ask the High State Council of the Belarus-Russia Union to hold constitutional-act referendums.