Monday Morning, Lebanon
April 11 2005
Ex-Soviet grouping mulling reforms, says Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS), the organization of ex-Soviet states would
discuss a possible reform of the grouping at its next summit in May.
`Our partners have been making diverse proposals and giving various
points of view’, added Putin from his home on the Black Sea, where he
was hosting Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on an official
visit.
The upcoming summit is to be held in Moscow on May 8.
The CIS was set up in 1991 in large part to fill the void left by the
disappearance of the Soviet Union, and Putin admitted in March that
its life span was limited, in contrast to the EU.
`The European Union was created for the unification of Europe, but
the CIS was set up to facilitate a civilized divorce’, Putin said.
The group includes all but three of the former Soviet republics.
Three of its members, Georgia, Ukraine and most recently Kyrgzstan,
have experienced uprisings that removed pro-Russian regimes in favot
of Western-leaning ones.
In a separate development, senior officials from three splinter
territories in the old Soviet Union said last week they were ready
for closer military cooperation as a result of the peaceful
revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia.
`The revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine have created a new
geopolitical situation’, commented Valeri Litskaya, external
relations chief for Moldova’s Russian-speaking separatist republic of
Transdniestr.
Litskaya said he feared `growing pressure’ on the secessionist
republics by Georgia and Moldova.
`We have common interests, common threats and a historic common
destiny that pushes us to come together and unite’, said Sergei
Chamba, external affairs head of Georgia’s breakaway region of
Abkhazia.
Litskaya said a meeting of leaders from the breakaway territories and
from the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh would meet in
Abkhazia’s main city of Sukhumi later this month.
Chamba said that in preparing for the meeting, `we discussed the
possibility of cooperating in the military domain’.
The president of Georgia’s separatist region of South Ossetia,
Dimitri Medoyev, said that if his region was attacked, it would count
in support from `brother peoples’ in North Ossetia, Transdniestr and
Abkhazia.