MosNews, Russia
July 21, 2006
3 of 12 CIS Leaders Will Not Attend Informal Summit in Moscow
Created: 21.07.2006 14:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:35 MSK, 15 hours 48 minutes ago
MosNews
Armenian, Georgian and Ukrainian Presidents will not attend the
informal CIS summit, which starts today in Moscow.
According to RIA Novosti news agency, Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan has come down with a severe cold and will be unable to attend
the informal meeting with his CIS counterparts in Moscow this weekend,
his press office said Friday.
Kocharyan is the third leader to pull out of the July 21-22 informal
summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose union of
11 post-Soviet nations.
Earlier today, Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili said he would not come. He
was expected to use the event for talks with President Vladimir
Putin on Georgian-Russian relations, strained by a controversy over
the presence of Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway regions of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. A source in Saakashvili’s inner circle
said a possible reason for the president’s withdrawal was that the
mooted meeting with Putin might not have taken place.
According to the ProUA news agency Ukrainian leader Victor Yushchenko
has also decided to ignore the informal meeting. "Taking into account
the current political situation in the country, President Yushchenko
has decided that he has to stay in Ukraine," the press secretary of
the Ukrainian president Irina Gerashchenko told ITAR-TASS news agency
on Friday.
The upcoming summit will be the seventh informal "shirt-sleeves"
meeting of CIS leaders since the organization was formed in December
1991.
It has no fixed agenda, but is expected to deal with reforms of the
grouping’s executive bodies as well as international developments of
mutual concern. The Russian president will tell his CIS counterparts
about the Group of Eight summit he hosted last weekend in a
St. Petersburg suburb.
The CIS includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova and
Georgia. Turkmenistan gave up full membership of the club in 2005
and is now an associate member.