The newly formed CIS Interstate Economic Committee has chosen Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Bolshakov as its first chairman, a press spokesman for the Commonwealth of Independent States secretariat said Monday.


President Boris Yeltsin proposed Bolshakov, a former deputy mayor of St. Petersburg who only joined the Russian government ten days ago, as deputy prime minister in charge of cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States. Bolshakov was the only candidate put forward for the job, which rotates annually.


Yeltsin, who is current chairman of the Council of the CIS Heads of State, sent a message to the committee Saturday outlining its tasks, which will include setting up customs and payments unions and conditions for a common market of goods, services, capital and labor among CIS states, Interfax reported.


The committee will be "something like the Commission of the European Union" although "not as wide-reaching and only concerned with economic matters," said Yevgeny Gorelik, press officer at the CIS Executive Secretariat in Minsk.


The committee is intended as the CIS's first supranational organization, although individual member states must agree to the committee's recommendations, Gorelik said.


He said that the committee's first meeting Saturday focused on plans to form unified customs and payment systems, adding that customs tariffs represented "the biggest task and the biggest problem" for interstate trade.


Leaders of 11 member states of the CIS -- all except Turkmenistan -- agreed to set up the Interstate Economic Committee at last month's CIS summit in Moscow. Yeltsin won agreement for the committee to be based in Moscow, although the Executive Secretariat of the CIS is based in Minsk, capital of Belarus.


The committee will meet again on Dec. 5 and plans to present recommendations to a meeting of CIS prime minsters scheduled for Dec. 9, Gorelik said. The next CIS summit will be held Dec. 23 in Kazakhstan's capital Almaty.