Agence France Presse — English
August 25, 2005 Thursday 8:49 AM GMT
Russia to host ex-Soviet grouping amid growing tensions
by Olga Nedbayeva
KAZAN, Russia
The historic Russian city of Kazan on Friday hosts a meeting of
leaders of the 12-nation Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
bloc of former Soviet republics, a forum riven by intra-regional
tensions, but one that may still help clear the air, analysts say.
The leaders will meet during celebrations of the 1000-year
anniversary of this city in Russia’s Tatarstan.
The timing is an intentional ploy — first tried by Russia at the
group’s last meeting in May, which coincided with World War II
commemorations in Moscow — aimed at creating a more relaxed
atmosphere and thus taking some of the heat out of the talks, Fyodor
Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Politics, said.
The leaders, Lukyanov noted, “have a hard time finding a common
language”.
Topping the meeting’s formal agenda is restructuring the operations
of the CIS and cooperation on “humanitarian and social issues,”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.
The group will also make a declaration on the forthcoming 20th
anniversary next April of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at the
Chernobyl power station in Ukraine in 1986.
While the CIS block was formed out of the ruins of the Soviet Union
in December 1991 in order to retain some of the structures and ties
that bound the old empire together, Moscow has acknowledged that it
is now of only limited usefulness.
In May Russian President Vladimir Putin said that fulfilling
“economic super-tasks” was beyond the CIS’s competence and instead
described the bloc as a “useful club for exchanging information”.
Western institutions such as the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also acknowledge that the CIS summits
have at least one useful purpose, enabling talks between the leaders
of two of the bloc’s most fractious neighbours, Armenia and
Azerbaijan.
As at previous CIS meetings, Armenian President Robert Kocharian will
hold talks on the sidelines of the summit with his Azeri counterpart
Ilham Aliyev. The talks follow renewed threats by Azerbaijan to
retake territory seized by Armenia during a war in the early 1990s.
In place of the unwieldy CIS, Russia has in recent years sought to
create smaller, more task-specific blocs such as the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation, a security grouping that brings together
Russia, China and four of the Central Asian former Soviet republics.
But even some of these structures have looked battered, as
fundamental tensions have torn apart the former Soviet space in the
last two years, reflected in popular uprisings in both Georgia and
Ukraine.
This week speculation mounted in Russia’s media that a four-way
Single Economic Space, which comprises Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia
and Ukraine, is close to collapse as Ukraine, following last year’s
“orange revolution” against a pro-Moscow administration, plans to
join a rival Westward-looking bloc.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko last week met with his
Georgian, Polish and Lithuanian counterparts to discuss the creation
of a Democratic Choice Community seen as a future counter-weight to
Moscow.
Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Moscow-based Political
Technologies Centre, says this nascent axis between the Baltic, Black
and Caspian Seas has all the ingredients needed for success — strong
leaders, Western sponsors, and political and economic goals, such as
exporting democracy and creating a transit corridor for the Westward
shipment of Caspian Sea oil.
“This alternative to the CIS would attract strong figures, leaving
Moscow all alone,” Makarkin said.