COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES, THE FORMER USSR, LIKELY TO COLLAPSE AND TAKE A DIFFERENT FORM
Ivan Shmelev

Pravda, Russia
Aug 29 2005

As long as Turkmenistan pulled out from the Commonwealth, one may
say that the future of the CIS is rather vague

CIS leaders gathered to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the
city of Kazan, the capital of the Tatarstan republic during the
past weekend. The Commonwealth of Independent States lost one of
its members, the republic of Turkmenistan: the pullout became the
main result of the summit. Turkmenistan decided to keep the status
of an observer only. In addition, there were certain discrepancies
seen in the text of the final declaration of the summit: GUAM states
(the organization incorporates Georgia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and
Moldavia) introduced several amendments to Russia’s document about
the struggle against terrorism. Ukraine did not sign documents about
the joint economic space. Experts are currently analyzing the recent
CIS summit in Kazan, trying to understand if it was the last meeting
for the Commonwealth of Independent States or not.

The reduction of the number of states included in the Commonwealth
became the central sensation of the summit. Saparmurat Niyazov, the
President of Turkmenistan, became the only president of CIS members,
who did not arrive in Kazan to participate in the summit. That was
quite a predictable turn of events: Mr. Niyazov, who is known as
Turkmenbashi, has not been showing any interest in any integration
unions and preferred only bilateral relations instead. “The father
of the Turkmen nation” was quite frightened with the series of
revolutions on the territory of CIS states and made up his mind to
completely isolate his nation from the rest of the world.

It is noteworthy that it was Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili,
who informed the CIS leaders of Turkmenistan’s decision. The republic
of Georgia has not been noticed for its active participation in CIS
summits on the level of ministers and experts. The Georgian president
said during the summit that Georgia was willing to set up a union
of democratic states around the periphery of Russian borders. The
statement made a lot of observers believe that Georgia will be the
next candidate to pull out from the CIS. Mr. Saakashvili said that
Georgia was in the talks with Ukraine, Lithuania and other states
would join them afterwards, but it would not be a substitute for the
CIS. “Georgia does not think that the CIS has run out of its abilities
and opportunities. The CIS has problems, and they need to be solved,”
the Georgian president said.

Similar remarks sounded from Saakashvili’s colleague, the Ukrainian
president, only one day before. Viktor Yushchenko, who backs up the
idea “to promote democracy in the former USSR,” signed a special
document for humanitarian cooperation cautiously. Ukraine, Georgia,
Azerbaijan and Moldavia introduced several amendments to the document
about the need to respect other states’ sovereignty. Similar amendments
were introduced to the documents about the struggle with terrorism
and extremism (the document was originally submitted by Russia):
the above-mentioned leaders added the notion of “separatism” to
the document.

The signing of the documents to establish the joint economic space
was a long-awaited event during the CIS summit in Kazan too. Russian
President Vladimir Putin said that 29 documents were planned to be
signed before December 1 of the current year between Russia, Kazakhstan
and Belarus. “We agreed that 15 other documents would also be signed
within the same structure by March 1 of 2006. Ukraine joined the
statements that were signed today. Ukraine set out its willingness to
work as a group of four – it will be joining other agreements as they
are being prepared and developed,” Putin said. Viktor Yushchenko
specified Putin’s remarks and said that Ukraine was not ready to
establish supranational agencies in the joint economic space.

Ukrainian President, Viktor Yushchenko, had a meeting with the
President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. It is not known if the
subject of Ukraine’s mediation in the regulation of Belarussian-Polish
relations was considered during the meeting, although Mr. Yushchenko
pointed out several problems in the bilateral relations, particularly
in the field of economy, politics and humanitarian spheres. Ukraine
called upon Belarus to join their efforts in the struggle with
consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is noteworthy that
the presidents of the two countries failed to agree upon the dates
of visits to each other.

The CIS summit in Kazan has not resulted in any progress regarding
the regulation of conflicts. The meeting between the presidents of
Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilkham Aliyev and Robert Kocharyan, which was
devoted to the Nagorny Karabakh problem, ended without any progress on
the matter. In addition, the president of the unrecognized Transdniestr
Republic, Igor Smirnov, virtually accused the President of Moldavia,
Vladimir Voronin, of the breakdown of talks. “I believe that a physical
guarantee, which can put an end to all criminal actions to disrupt
the talk process, is extremely important for us,” said. He. Igor
Smirnov thanked Viktor Yushchenko for his readiness to send Ukrainian
peacemakers to the conflict region, but the tone of his statement
was rather skeptic: “I remember when the army operations were getting
started in 1992, there were Romanian and Ukrainian observers in the
region. However, they all disappeared somewhere, and the war started,”
Smirnov said.

One may thus infer that the summit in Kazan has unveiled certain
vestiges of the CIS’s division into two camps. The first one of them
includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (with
Armenia as an observer and Uzbekistan, which decided to distance itself
from revolutionary democracies after the recent events in Andijan). The
second group incorporates members of the GUAM political and economic
organization, whereas the republic of Turkmenistan is included in
none of the mentioned associations. Discrepancies have been growing
between these groups for many years already, the sides fail to come
to a consolidated solution of the problem, which eventually makes
the Commonwealth of Independent States become a decorative club,
in which every member has its own interests. As long as Turkmenistan
pulled out from the Commonwealth, one may say that the future of the
CIS is rather vague, which became clear after the meeting in Kazan.