July 8, 1994 - The leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan agreed at their summit in Almaty on 8 July to form a comprehensive defense and economic union, various agencies report. Under the terms of the agreement, a new inter-state committee of the presidents and prime ministers of the countries will be formed to oversee the standardization of laws; additionally, there will be inter-state committees for foreign affairs and for defense, a Central Asian Bank for Cooperation and Development, as well as a prime ministers committee responsible for coordinating finance and economic planning.

All committees will be chaired by Kazakhstan for the coming year, and then by Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, also for a year each. Kazakhstans president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, said that the economic and defense union is only the first step, and stressed that the union is open to other CIS states; Nazarbaev may be hoping that the Central Asian union will be a small-scale model of his planned Eurasian union, which would replace or enhance the current CIS.