AN INFORMAL FAREWELL TO THE DYSFUNCTIONAL COMMONWEALTH
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
July 24, 2006
By Pavel K. Baev
There were plenty of good reasons to organize an informal top-level
meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in Moscow last
weekend. Old conflicts and new tensions dividing its 12 member-states,
from the deadlocked antagonism between Armenia and Azerbaijan to
the ongoing spy scandal between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, require
the urgent attention of their leaders and good-neighborly mediation
between the parties. The broad theme of "energy security" needs to
be collectively elaborated by producers and consumers in order to
harmonize their interests and prevent new "gas wars." Yet none of
these real issues was actually put on the agenda of the summit, which
started with a long dinner at a restaurant on the shore of Moscow River
on Friday evening and ended with horse racing on Saturday afternoon
(Izvestiya, July 24).
When inviting his "junior allies" to spend some quality time together,
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not have in mind discussing
conflict management or gas prices; his main topic was the success he
had achieved at the G-8 summit the previous weekend. He had played
host to the leaders of the most influential countries in the world
and not only provided an excellent venue but proved his status as
a rightful member of the most elitist of political clubs, brushing
aside questions about the quality of democracy in Russia (Kreml.org,
July 20; Moskovskie novosti, July 21). By all accounts, Putin scored a
big victory and was eager to translate that result into a more usable
position of power in the CIS.
Such a prospect was not exactly enthralling for the invitees, and
four presidents opted to skip the occasion at the last minute, giving
various excuses (EDM, July 21; Kommersant, July 22). Turkmenistan’s
President Saparmurat Niyazov has never been a fan of the CIS and,
after reducing his status to an "associate member" last year, he
refused to interrupt his vacation this year. Armenia’s President
Robert Kocharian caught a cold, which was probably unfortunate, but
of no great import, since Moscow was not planning to launch any fresh
initiative on Karabakh and is generally inclined to take Yerevan for
granted. Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko decided that he had
nothing to discuss with Moscow until a government is formed in Kyiv,
since Putin’s opinion of Viktor Yanukovych, who hopes to claim to the
position of prime minister, is known only too well. Georgia’s President
Mikheil Saakashvili needed and even asked for a face-to-face meeting
with Putin, but when the request was diplomatically turned down,
he cancelled the trip at the last moment.
The Georgian case is perhaps the most burning one in the entire
CIS zone, and Putin’s clearly conveyed refusal to give it due
attention is even more worrisome than the shootouts and explosions
in Tskhinvali. Saakashvili paid a visit to Washington two weeks prior
to the G-8 summit, and he had expected that President George W. Bush,
together with his European allies, would raise the issue of Russia’s
support to secessionists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia at an opportune
moment. It did not happen, perhaps because Lebanon demanded priority
attention (Prognosis.ru, July 19). Putin now feels emboldened to
experiment with direct pressure on Georgia, such as staging military
exercises, while in the Russian mainstream media the campaign against
"war mongers" in Tbilisi has reached new highs (Nezavisimaya gazeta,
July 24). The din drowns out rare voices, like Yulia Latynina’s, that
warn about the risk of being drawn into a full-scale interstate war
by the force of Moscow’s own propaganda and the parochial interests
of a few "peacekeeping" colonels who control the smuggling business
in South Ossetia (Ekho Moskvy, July 22).
The "frozen" conflict in Transnistria has also recently shown dangerous
spasms, so Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin decided to come to
Moscow in an attempt to cut some ice in bilateral relations, which
have stayed on a very low plateau since he declined Putin’s peace
plan in December 2003. Having no illusions about the prospects of
integration, Voronin was generous with his praise of the value of
CIS, hoping at least to get some relaxation of the Russian ban on
imports of Moldavian wine (Ekho Moskvy, July 21). President Ilham
Aliyev from Azerbaijan probably enjoyed the races, where his horse
finished nose-to-nose with the Russian favorite, but it was hard to
detect any interest in the CIS on his part (Kommersant, July 24). The
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which was joyfully inaugurated on the
eve of the G-8 summit, is a project hugely more important to him than
anything in the Babylonian tower of paperwork produced during the 15
years of the Commonwealth’s fruitless existence.
Only one diehard enthusiast of deepening cooperation (as he was
of preserving the USSR in 1991) attempted to make a difference at
the summit. Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev presented a
well-developed draft for reforming the CIS centered on a proposal to
adopt decisions strictly by consensus on the few matters that were of
importance for all members and to guarantee that such decisions would
be mandatory to implement (Polit.ru, July 21). By no means an idealist,
Nazarbayev appealed to the common political sense of his colleagues,
suggesting a drastic streamlining of the bureaucratic procedures and,
taking a clue from the G-8 method, appointing "sherpas" for hammering
out the details (Vedomosti, July 24). His sound ideas could have
reinvigorated the Commonwealth a few years back, but now they are
demonstratively out of place.
The problem is not that Ukraine has lost interest in the CIS and
is considering an "exit strategy"; neither is it Georgia’s desire
to join NATO nor Turkmenistan’s self-isolation. The main problem
for Nazarbayev’s plan is that it does not fit Putin’s vision of
a Russia-centered, tightly controlled organization that has few
"horizontal" links between its members. Insisting on adopting a
binding "common position" on international issues around the Russian
line, Putin is challenging the malcontents to quit the CIS. By the
official summit later this year, some of them might indeed do it;
but that hardly would make it possible to transform the curtailed
Commonwealth into a functional structure.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
