The meeting of the Defense Ministers Council of the CIS countries discussed expanding military cooperation, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Wednesday.

"I believe today’s meeting has become another specific step toward expanding military cooperation and deepening relations of confidence and mutual understanding among member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States," Serdyukov told reporters after the meeting.

"One can say with confidence that today’s joint work made it possible fruitfully to discuss a number of questions. We have, specifically, analyzed the implementation of the plan of military cooperation of the CIS member states up to 2010," Serdyukov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

The Russian minister also said the meeting "coordinated questions of financial insurance of the Joint Air Defense System of the CIS states for 2008."

The plan of joint measures for operative training of the armed forces of the CIS countries for 2008 was also endorsed.

"The Council members gave special attention to joint exercises with the Comradeship-in-Arms 2007 joint exercise with service firing of air defense forces. Air defense forces of six countries - Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Uzbekistan - will participate," the minister said.

The CIS was set up in 1991, the time the Soviet Union was formally pronounced dead, in an effort to preserve a basic framework for routine organizational matters in relations developed over 70 years between Soviet republics.

It includes all ex-Soviet republics except Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which are now in the European Union and NATO.