A ONE-PRESIDENT SUMMIT; Vladimir Putin the host

Agency WPS
What the Papers Say Part A (Russia)
July 21, 2006 Friday

By Vladimir Soloviov, Sergei Strokan

Ten CIS presidents are coming to Moscow for an informal summit;
CIS presidents are coming to Moscow for an informal summit. The CIS
is split into pro-Russian and anti-Russian factions, but it hasn’t
collapsed yet – only because the CIS countries aspiring for integration
into the West still hope to settle their conflicts with Russia first.

Turkmenistan is the only CIS country that won’t be represented by
its president, Saparmurat Niyazov, in Moscow. The Turkmenbashi rarely
attends informal CIS summits.

Ten other CIS presidents are coming – even Mikhail Saakashvili,
Viktor Yushchenko, and Vladimir Voronin. Their fiercely pro-Western
Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova were the worst affected by a sharp
turn in Moscow’s foreign policy that sparked gas and trade wars with
insufficiently loyal CIS regimes last year.

A meeting between Vladimir Putin and his Georgian counterpart
Saakashvili will probably be the central event of the informal
summit. Russian-Georgian relations are at a record low. Trade wars and
scandalous political statements have escalated into outright threats.

Conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be in the
focus of attention at the bilateral talks. Everything points to
the conclusion that Saakashvili is going to Moscow to demand,
not to beg. The president of Georgia has some major cards up
his sleeve. For a start, Georgia withdrew its signature from the
bilateral agreement concerning WTO membership for Russia. Secondly, the
parliament of Georgia unanimously passed a resolution on withdrawing
Russian peacekeeping contingents from the Georgian-Abkhazian and
Georgian-Ossetian conflict areas.

The Kremlin in its turn is determined to keep its obstinate neighbor
under pressure. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it plain in his
interview yesterday that Russian peacekeepers are not leaving. Lavrov
accused Georgia of sabotaging the peacekeeping operation and failing to
implement international agreements on regional conflict resolution. The
Russian minister warned Tbilisi against the use of force, and promised
protection of citizens of Russia "by all available means."

According to our sources, Moscow is considering tougher economic
sanctions against Georgia. The ban on import of wines and mineral
water from Georgia was just a curtain-raiser, it seems. When he
was meeting with Saakashvili in June, Putin hinted that Russia had
another economic lever to use. "Between $1.5 million and $2 billion
is transacted from Russia into Georgia every year," he said. "That’s
more than any aid from the third countries." By plugging the financial
channels, the Kremlin would deprive Tbilisi of one of its major sources
of foreign currency. On the other hand, this is not a measure to be
considered lightly.

Unlike his Georgian counterpart, President Voronin of Moldova
is coming to Moscow to try to make peace with the Kremlin. In a
major press conference shortly before his departure for Moscow,
Voronin took the first step towards restoring relations with Russia
and said that he does not perceive any political motives in higher
gas tariffs. The Kremlin must have taken notice. Voronin’s Foreign
Policy Advisor Sergiu Mokanu says that a bilateral meeting between
the Moldovan and Russian president has been scheduled.

However, Putin will probably find himself in the position of a
referee at the summit. There is no love lost between presidents of
some pro-Russian CIS countries. A triangle of hostility exists in
Central Asia – between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It is
usually Dushanbe and mostly Bishkek versus Tashkent. Uzbek secret
services boasted of having captured a Tajik spy shortly before the
summit in Moscow. The spy turned out to be one Furkat Tuigunov,
a citizen of Tajikistan of Uzbek origin. According to the Uzbek
authorities, Tuigunov already confessed and said the Tajik State
Security ministry had recruited him in 2001 and ran him ever since.
Tuigunov allegedly confessed that he had prepared acts of sabotage
on the territory of Uzbek border regions and was tasked to arrange
physical elimination of certain citizens of Uzbekistan. Our sources
indicate that President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan is going to
raise the topic of Tajik-Uzbek relations at the summit and ask Putin
to intercede on behalf of his country.

Neither can Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan boast of any warm relations
with official Tashkent. Bilateral relations soured after the Andijan
events in May of 2005, when Bishkek refused to extradite 500 refugees
to Uzbekistan but helped them move on to other countries instead. Islam
Karimov of Uzbekistan never forgot it. President Ilham Aliyev of
Azerbaijan and President Robert Kocharian of Armenia are also going
to enlist the services of Russia as a go-between. The Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict resolution is in another impasse at this point.

Conversation with Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus promises to
be particularly trying. Elected the president again last spring,
Lukashenko was enraged to hear an ultimatum from the Kremlin: either
he sells Belarussian gas infrastructure to Gazprom or gas tariffs for
Belarus go up to the European level. Lukashenko resisted it as long
as he dared but eventually succumbed to the pressure for fear to lose
everything (the seat of the president, first and foremost). Alexander
Ryazanov of Gazprom flew to Minsk yesterday to sign the protocol on
assets evaluation.

In other words, the forthcoming summit will be rather like Putin’s
waiting room, where the visiting dignitaries will wait their turn to
air their grievances and problems.

P.S.

The informal CIS meeting is taking place right after the G8 summit
in St. Petersburg, and this nuance cannot help having its effect
on the former. No matter what else might be said about the outcome
of the G8 summit, one has to admit that Russia managed to remain in
the elite club and blunt the attacks of critics of Russian democracy
(for how long doesn’t really matter for the time being). In short, the
painstakingly directed return of Russia to the sphere of international
affairs has taken place according to the script. It follows that
Russia is the only member of the commonwealth of outsiders that
simultaneously belongs to the upper segment of world politics.

CIS leaders do not belong to the pick of the crop of the global
politics, and Russia with its global status becomes their Elder Brother
or promoter of their interests in dealings with the centers of world
power. From this standpoint, membership in the CIS with Russia offers
them practically the only chance of integration into the civilized
world (even though this chance is really illusory). Russia in its turn
is given a chance to shift the CIS to a new phase of development, the
one that will benefit Russia itself. The Commonwealth of Independent
States of the 1990s is about to become the Commonwealth of Dependent
States of 2006. And it isn’t closed to new memberships.

Source: Kommersant, July 21, 2006, p. 8

Translated by A. Ignatkin