Kazakhstan, Astana, Oct. 5 / Trend D. Mukhtarov /
It is necessary to establish the Kazakh- Russian bilateral relations for the Customs Union to work properly, Kazakh political analyst Dulatbek Khidirbekuhli said.
"From a political point of view, then, it is necessary to establish the Kazakh- Russian bilateral relations for the Customs Union to work properly because taking into account the shortages that we have in the Customs Union, the problems in the bilateral relations must be added," he said at a meeting of "World of Eurasia" expert club on "Kazakh- Russian relations: realities and prospects". "These problems concern Baikonur, polygons."
In his opinion, first of all, the cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia must be strengthened for the Customs Union to be strengthened too. All political issues, the cooperation issues in the field of security and counter-terrorism, extradition must be resolved.
"Kazakhstan will join WTO in late 2013," he said. "What will we gain? This is a big dilemma what is better - WTO or Customs Union? Ideally, they must complement each other. This would be a big advantage for Kazakhstan and Russia. But in reality I anticipate that they may interfere with each other and WTO can destroy Customs Union."
Another Kazakh political analyst Anton Morozov thinks that integration between Kazakhstan and Russia has been personified.
"Much has been said about the spontaneous and chaotic integration movement, but besides that, I would also like to underscore that, in my opinion it is personified. I am not sure that integration movement will continue and bilateral relations will not change their format, unless there is someone from the leaders of Customs Union countries, because there are different groups with different orientations, not only among society, but also among the elite, - somenone is focused on the liberal West, and someone on the pan-Turkic ideas," Morozov said.
In his opinion, it is absolutely not a fact that common borders and security issues will ensure the continuity and the same pace of integration.
"I would like to talk about the information foam, beneath of which the kind of ground it is not seen - whether it is a stable ground, or a swamp," Morozov said.
He went on to add that, regarding the Customs Union and Common Economic Space - there are no conceptual papers that stipulate the manner and level of supporting this.
"This is why we have such a chaotic picture in connection to bilateral contacts and integration in general," Morozov said.
According to him, several levels are distinguished. The first level - is the information support, the work of official bodies, various protocols, etc. All of these can be found here, but in general little is known about this in the information space.
Second level is the social information, coverage of the lives of ordinary people.
"And there are some information diffusions between the expert level and official level, but as for the third, the largest integrative level, it is difficult to call things here positive. This is why we see such a variety of approaches. The supporters of integration processes put forward quite trivial ideology - a common past etc., opponents find strong arguments against it all. A systematic information work is lacking, it is chaotic," Morozov said.