Preparations for Russia’s G8 presidency will give priority to search for solutions to key intl issues

MOSCOW. Dec 31 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has given the country’s government and Foreign Ministry until May 1, 2014 to complete negotiations on a Eurasian Economic Union Treaty with Belarus and Kazakhstan and draft a bill to ratify this document.

The list of instructions that come as a follow-up to the president’s annual address to the Federal Assembly was published on the Kremlin website.

Apart from that, the head of state asked the Foreign Ministry to work together with the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the Federal Drug Control Service to tackle as a priority a number of acute global issues, including the need to bolster the nonproliferation regimes and the fight against international terrorism and the drug threat, as Russia prepares to take over the G8 presidency in 2014, as well as ahead of BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organizations summits in 2015.