The Messenger

Tuesday, March 29, 2005, #056 (0830)

Georgia looks at CIS with ‘practical’ eye

Alternative unions, including entities for economic cooperation, gain
backing against decline of CIS
By M. Alkhazashvili

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)is gasping after the third
electoral failure-turn-revolution in a member state in the last 18 months,
and analysts are arguing that the organization’s death knell is already
here.

Reverberations from the Kyrgyz revolutions spread from Moscow to Kiev to
Tbilisi as commentators and officials openly questioned the value of the
organization over the past week.

But speaking in Yerevan on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to
downplay what he called “excessive expectations” for the CIS. “While the
European Union members worked to pull closer together, the CIS was created
for a civilized divorce,” Putin said during a press conference after meeting
with Armenian President Robert Kocharian.

Pundits in Russia have argued differently, highlighting that it was Putin’s
policies that doomed the union. Russian analyst Stanislav Belkovski writes
in Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Moscow should do three things: 1) acknowledge
the death of the CIS and refuse attempts to revive it; 2) present an
initiative for the formal dissolution of the CIS, before Ukraine or other
GUUAM countries dot; 3) create a conception for another kind of a
post-Soviet Union organization and invite everyone. “It is important to
recognize that the collapse of the CIS is a direct consequence of the policy
of the Putin administration,” Belkovski writes.

Once intended to maintain the integration of the Soviet Union while member
country establish independent government, the CIS is moving further to the
margins as Moscow places a new accent on the other unions such as a proposed
Europe-Asian Economic Commonwealth or a United Economic Space.

Already post-Soviet space has been covered with several kinds of bilateral
or multi-lateral organizations designed to succeed where the CIS failed.
Most of these involve Russia (the Russian-Belarus Union, the Euro-Asian
Alliance, the Organization for Agreement on Collective Security) but others
attempt to unite counties decidedly without Russia (GUUAM, Traceca).

At the CIS summit in September 2004, Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan
Nazarbaevin presented a general plan for reform but reform is unlikely when
member countries are pursuing alternatives and openly questioning the CIS.

Just as Putin was pushing aside criticism of the CIS on Friday, in Kiev
Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili and Victor Yushchenko agreed to what they
called a “new axis” stretching from the Baltic States to the Black Sea.
Yushchenko admitted, “The activity of the CIS is minimal. Kiev is only for
economic relations within the CIS space.”

Saakashvili was even more blunt. “Regarding the CIS we have to think
pragmatically. If a free trade agreement is fully implemented it will be
beneficial for every entrepreneur. But if border blockades and visa
suspensions carry on and this agreement is not implemented, the organization
makes no sense,” the president said.