ELECTIONS TO RUSSIA-BELARUS UNION PARLIAMENT LIKELY TO BE HELD ALREADY THIS YEAR








MOSCOW, March 5, 2001, /from RIA Novosti correspondent Maria Pozdnyakova/--Speaker of the State Duma /the lower house of Russia's parliament/ Gennady Seleznev has announced that elections to the Union Parliament of Russia and Belarus may likely be held already this year. The Speaker voiced such a supposition at the 14th session of the Council of Compatriots at the State Duma which comprises delegates of Russian communities from the Baltic states -- Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia -- and countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, or the CIS, with 12 former Soviet republics as its members.


	Gennady Seleznev recalled that the law on elections to the Union parliament had not been finally approved by the State Duma which had only considered it in the first reading. The State Duma Speaker believes that amendments to the second reading of the draft law "should be debated together with the Belarussian side for both states to have identical laws." Asked to comment on prospects for the Union state Seleznev stressed that "we will not fail to implement the idea and will surely form a Union state."