National council session in Astana

Today, on 28 November, the third session of the national council of RK chaired by the president of RK Nursultan Nazarbayev has been opened in Astana, on the agenda of which there is programme "Cultural heritage for 2004-2006", KZ-today correspondent reports from Astana.

"Issues of the development of culture, maintaining and multiplying the rich cultural heritage of our society have a big significance", - N. Nazarbayev said, opening the meeting of national council. "It is the most important political issue, tightly related with defining the way for further civilised development of our country", - the president stressed. "In the conditions of growing involvement of our society to the world economic information area, culture becomes the most important condition for maintaining identity of the multiethnic people of Kazakhstan", - the president stressed. N. Nazarbayev believes that "we are facing a task of forming such socio-cultural society, which would be basing on the richest layer of language, spiritual, material culture of Kazakh people, as well as all ethnicities, living in our country". "Our economically strengthening state, the open society that is under formation in Kazakhstan needs an appropriate cultural area", - the president stated. In relation with this, he believes, "concrete measures of forming new basic behavioural values of Kazakhstani people" must be taken. "Today the state has a possibility to leave the previous practice of a lack of attention towards the development of culture", - the head of state believes. "The possibilities are emerging", - he observed.

The third session of the national council of RK is continued. Dyussen Kasseinov, minister of culture, and Sautbek Abdrakhmanov, minister of information, will speak on it.