Today, a session of the Russian State Council is held presided by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. This is the 16th meeting of the state body since its establishment and the third outside the Kremlin. At the outset of the meeting the Russian leader said: "Kazan is an excellent example of the socio-cultural unity that binds together all the peoples of Russia and its anniversary is unquestionably a significant event for the entire country and gives us the opportunity to draw many valuable conclusions for modern Russia's political development and social and economic life."

Further in his speech, Vladimir Putin spoke about the general significance of the State Council for the Russian society as an institution capable of ensuring a responsible, interested and result-oriented approach to implementation of state decisions. "The State Council has proven itself to be one the country's most influential state and political institutions. Not only has it become a forum for dialogue between the federal and regional authorities; it is also a national forum for discussing the most pressing domestic and foreign policy issues and important matters of state and economic development. Here, we have looked for answers to the global challenges of these times and have set the direction for our country's development. It would be no exaggeration to call the State Council today a sort of "expanded government" able to find national, broad-based solutions to the most complex problems."

"I propose that we discuss today several areas for our future work.

The first area is improving federal relations. Now that we all feel confidence in our state's strength and durability, we have the real opportunity to increase the role and independence of the regions.

It is clear that the state authorities who are closest to the people, namely the regional and local authorities, should have ample freedom of initiative and enough resources of their own to effectively deal with the problems their regions face."

"The second area of our work is to develop genuinely innovative and strategic ideas that would open up new prospects for the country and unite our society.

This, of course, requires us to develop qualitatively new approaches to ensuring the State Council's work. This concerns, above all, developing the information and analytical aspect of our work. We need to organise active cooperation with authoritative research centres and with civil society institutions, in particular with the Public Council that is currently being established." The head of the State Council working group, governor, chairman of the government of the Khanty-Mansi Yugra okrug Alexander Phlippenko delivered a report "On State Council experience in discussing major issues of internal and external policies, security of unity of power and development of federalism."

The Presidents of Tatarstan, Mordovia, governors of subjects of the Russian Federation spoke about the perceptions in the regions of the being implemented administrative reform and the most pressing issue of delineation of powers between the different level authorities and building a consolidated policy that takes into account the interests of the central and local power.

The Russian Interior Ministry Rashid Nurgaliev spoke about the necessity for the regional authorities to pay greater attention to issues of security and financial support of the law enforcement agencies.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Vladimir Putin offered his remarks on the speeches given. He believes, during the two days that the heads of the regions will spend in Kazan at the celebration of the city's millenium, they will have plenty of opportunity to discuss the above mentioned issues in more detail. "The State Council meeting is the first in a whole series of events celebrating the 1000th anniversary of Kazan and I would above all like to congratulate you sincerely on this occasion. "

26.08.2005
Source: Intertat.ru
Photo by M.Kozlovsky