Leaders of post-Soviet bloc to discuss heightened terror threat
by Nick Coleman

Agence France Presse — English
September 14, 2004 Tuesday 2:02 AM GMT

ALMATY Sept 14 — Leaders of several former Soviet countries meet
in the Kazakh capital Astana on Wednesday to discuss redoubling
anti-terror cooperation in the wake of recent terror attacks in Russia
that sent shock-waves through the region.

The attacks that culminated in the deaths of some 339 people at a
school near Russia’s breakaway Chechnya region brought home the need
for more coordination among the 12-member Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS), Vladimir Rushailo, the group’s secretary, said.

“Terrorism knows no borders, no limits and no point at which to stop,”
Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Rushailo as saying.

Russia has long sought to bring its Soviet-era satellite states into
line with regard to issues such as Soviet-made weaponry that has
fallen into the hands of separatists in Chechnya and neighbouring
Georgia’s historic tolerance of Chechen rebels in its Pankisi Gorge.

On Monday Russia’s President Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow’s
readiness to strike terrorist targets abroad — a vow taken as most
likely aimed at Georgia, with whom Moscow’s relations are at an
all-time low.

“The terrorists must be eliminated directly in their lair and, if
the situation requires it, that includes abroad,” Putin said.

Whether the fall-out from Beslan will inject new urgency into
Wednesday’s meeting remains to be seen however. Some analysts believe
that Moscow has already accepted the rag-tag nature of CIS meetings,
which have often been poorly attended and produced few formal results.

Nonetheless a number of smaller-scale meetings on the sidelines could
bear fruit, Dosym Satpayev, an analyst at Kazakhstan’s Assessment
Risks Group, said.

Particularly productive for Russia has been the so-called Collective
Security Treaty Organisation that has given Moscow military bases in
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — countries that Moscow considers a buffer
against unrest in Afghanistan.

“The CIS doesn’t work effectively and isn’t needed — the only use
it has is as a label under which the presidents can get together and
exchange views,” Satpayev said.

Among the most pressing discussions will be two-way talks billed as
“make-or-break” between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliyev, whose countries fought a five-year
war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s.

Though a fragile ceasefire is in force, the two sides are still
officially in a state of war and Azerbaijan has threatened to renew
hostilities.

“A lot depends on the meeting in Astana,” Aliyev told journalists in
north-western Azerbaijan recently.

Also likely to be discussed is a document circulated among
the CIS countries earlier calling for reform of the West’s main
democracy-promoting body in the region, the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Moscow recently told France and Germany that it believes the body
that helped end the Cold War concentrates too much on human rights
and too little on security.

The OSCE has in the past been at loggerheads with Russia over Moscow’s
policy in Chechnya.

However Azerbaijan’s Aliyev — himself the object of sharp OSCE
criticism in the past — has already ruled out signing any call for
OSCE reform at Wednesday’s meeting.

Turkmenistan’s reclusive President Saparmurat Niyazov has already
said he will not attend due to a prior medical appointment.