STATE HEAD MEETS ESTONIAN PM

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia /MONTSAME/ In frames of his participation in the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit, the President Ts.Elbegdorj received on Monday Mr Andrus Ansip, the Prime Minister of Estonia. Within its many-pillar foreign policy Mongolia wants to expand the relations and cooperation with the European Union (EU), including Estonia, the leader of Mongolia said and emphasized an importance of high level mutual visits which will develop the bilateral relations. He is certain that the two sides have experiences to share. The mining sector has been playing a main role in Mongolia's economy, greatly influencing an economic growth of 17.5 percent last year, for example, and there are nice opportunities to boost the cooperation in infrastructure, power stations and roads spheres, the President said. He said some reforms has been made by Mongolia within its chairmanship of the Community of Democracies (CoD), and invited high representatives of Estonia to the 7th Ministerial Conference of the CoD scheduled on July 29 of 2013 in Ulaanbaatar. In turn, Mr Ansip said Estonia has well developed E-governance, communication and IT, for example, over 90 per cent of its banking transactions, income tax declarations and state services run electronically, and said they can collaborate with Mongolia in these sectors. He spoke about Estonia's producing oil from pyroschist, "this oil can be used in power stations and as a petroleum, it is not harmful to environment." Then he expressed willingness to visit Mongolia. The State Head invited the PM to Mongolia, and then proposed widening of the bilateral cooperation in the E-governance and communication. The Estonian President has been invited to Mongolia with a visit, he added. Saying Mongolia intends to introduce the EU standards, the President asked Estonia to cooperate with Mongolia in implementing a partnership and cooperation agreement to be established between Mongolia and the EU, and said Mongolia wants to become a participating state of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). B.Khuder