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<text> <title> Agreement to Establish the Commonwealth </title> <article> <hdr> Foreign Policy Bulletin, January-April 1992 The Reorganization of Europe: Official Agreement by Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to Establish the Commonwealth, December 8, 1991 </hdr> <body> We, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, as founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, having signed the Union Treaty of 1922 and hereafter referred to as the agreeing parties, state that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality, is ceasing its existence. Based on historical commonalities of our peoples and on ties that were set up between them, considering bilateral agreements signed between the agreeing parties, Striving to found democratic legal states and intending to develop our relations on the basis of mutual recognition and the respect of state sovereignty, the integral right to self- determination, the principles of equality and noninterference in internal affairs, the refusal to use force or pressure by economic or other means, the settlement of controversial problems through agreement, other common principles and norms of international law, Taking into account that the further development and strengthening of relations of friendship, good-neighborliness and mutually beneficial cooperation between our states is consistent with the basic national interests of their people and serves in the interests of peace and security, Confirming our commitment to the goals and principles of the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and other documents from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Obliging to observe common international norms on human and national rights, We agree on the following: Article 1 The agreeing parties are founding a Commonwealth of Independent States. Article 2 The agreeing parties guarantee their citizens, regardless of nationality or other differences, equal rights and freedoms. Each of the agreeing parties guarantees citizens of other parties and also people without citizenship who reside on its territory, regardless of nationality or other differences, civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights and freedoms in accordance with common international norms on human rights. Article 3 The agreeing parties that wish to found unique ethnocultural regions to contribute to the manifestation, preservation and development of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious distinctions of national minorities residing on their territories, will take them under their own protection. Article 4 The agreeing parties will develop equal and mutually beneficial cooperation of their peoples and states in the spheres of politics, economics, culture, education, health care, environmental protection, science, trade, and humanitarian and other spheres, and will contribute to the wide exchange of information and will fully and strictly observe mutual obligations. The parties consider it necessary to conclude agreements on cooperation in the above-mentioned spheres. Article 5 The agreeing parties recognize and respect each other's territorial integrity, and the integrity of each other's borders in the framework of the commonwealth. They guarantee openness of borders, and the freedom for citizens to travel and exchange information within the framework of the commonwealth. Article 6 Members of the commonwealth will cooperate to insure international peace and security and to carry out effective measures on limiting weapons and military expenditures. They are striving to liquidate all nuclear armaments, to have total and complete disarmament under strict international control. The parties will respect each other's striving to achieve the status of a nuclear-free zone and neutral state. Members of the commonwealth will preserve and support common military and strategic space under a common command, including common control over nuclear armaments, which will be regulated by special agreement. They also mutually guarantee necessary conditions for the deployment, functioning, material and social maintenance of strategic armed forces. The parties are obliged to pursue consensual policy on questions of social protection and pensions for military personnel and their families. Article 7 The parties recognize that the spheres of their mutual activities conducted on a mutual basis through common coordinating institutions of the commonwealth embrace: -- Coordination of foreign policy. -- Cooperation in forming and developing a common economic space, common European and Eurasian markets, in the sphere of customs policy. -- Cooperation to develop transport and communications systems. -- Cooperation on the sphere of environmental protection, participation in creation of the all-encompassing international system of ecological security. -- Questions of migration policy. -- The fight against organized crime. Article 8 The parties are aware of the universal character of the Chernobyl disaster and are obliged to unite and coordinate their efforts to minimize and overcome its consequences. They agreed to sign a special agreement on this matter, taking the consequences of the catastrophe into consideration. Article 9 Disputes relating to the interpretation and usage of the norms of the current agreement are subjects to be solved through negotiations between corresponding organs, and at the state and governmental level if necessary. Article 10 Each party reserves the right to suspend the current agreement or its individual articles by notifying the agreement's participants a year in advance. The current agreement can be supplemented or changed according to mutual consent of the agreeing parties. Article 11 From the moment the current agreement is signed, the laws of third states, including the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, are not valid on the territories of states which signed the current agreement. Article 12 The parties guarantee the fulfillment of international obligations, treaties and agreements of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, coming from these obligations. Article 13 The current agreement does not concern obligations of the agreeing parties in relation to third states. The current agreement is open to all state members of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also to other states that share the goals and principles of the current agreement. Article 14 The official location to station the coordinating organs of the Commonwealth is the city of Minsk. The activities of the organs of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the territories of state members of the Commonwealth are stopped. Finalized in three copies in the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian languages in the city of Minsk, December 8, 1991. All three copies bear equal weight. (Signed at Minsk, Belarus by Stanislav Shushkevich, Chairman of Parliament, and Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, Republic of Belarus; President Boris N. Yeltsin and Secretary of State Gennadi Burbulis, Russian Federation; and by President Leonid M. Kravchuk and Prime Minister Vitold Fokjin, Ukraine. Text as issued by the Government of Russia.) </body> </article> </text>