MOSCOW. Oct 26 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian and Belarussian defense ministers, Sergei Ivanov and Leonid Maltsev, have signed a plan of cooperation between their countries' Defense Ministries.
The document was signed after a session of the joint collegium of the Defense Ministries of Russia and Belarus in Moscow on Tuesday, an Interfax-Military News Agency correspondent reported.
The two countries' 2002-2006 program of military-technical cooperation was discussed during the session.
"The program envisions joint research on security, defense, military principles and actual steps to put them into practice. The document also calls for providing a scientific foundation for setting up a military agency in the Russia-Belarus Union," the Russian Defense Ministry's press service told Interfax.
"Taking account of the fact that military-technical cooperation between Russia and Belarus is currently rising to a qualitatively new level in its development, the decision was made at the collegium's session to introduce amendments to existing documents that regulate the area of Russian-Belarussian military cooperation," the press service said.