NEW YORK (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th April, 2019) The first bilateral Mayors Summit in 20 years arranged by Russian and US sister cities is set to take place in Russia's Lipetsk on October 12, Sister Cities International (SCI) Chairman Emeritus Bill Boerum told Sputnik.
"As arranged by the Union of Russian Cities, it [the summit] will be in Lipetsk. The formal sessions of the conference ... will be all day Friday, the 12th [October 12]," Boerum said.
Boerum, who serves as SCI country representative for Russia, said that the organization had been cooperating with the Union of Russian Cities (URC) to plan the summit that will take place in Russia.
The leadership of the SCI would soon announce the information about the upcoming summit and start to recruit US municipal and regional officials, as well as heads from the local committees of the organization, Boerum noted.
According to Boerum, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, country's Embassy in Washington, and the US Embassy in Moscow expressed their support and encouraged the holding of the summit in Lipetsk.
In November, Boerum told Sputnik that Russian and US sister cities were planning to conduct the Mayors Summit to address common challenges for US and Russian cities and strengthen bilateral cooperation; however, the specific site for the conference had not been determined yet.
SCI was established in the United States about 60 years ago. The global organization has more established more than 2,000 partnerships between cities in 146 countries. About 60 Russian and 70 US cities have sister relations.
