Javno.hr, Croatia
June 10 2007

Ex-Soviet Leaders Mull Trade Amid Strained Ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the leaders of 12 former
Soviet states on Sunday to forge closer trade links.

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the leaders of 12 former
Soviet states on Sunday to forge closer trade links.
Putin hosted leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
after a high profile economic forum in Russia’s second city of St
Petersburg.

"I hope we will devote our meeting today to economic cooperation in
the post-Soviet space," Putin told his guests as he welcomed them to
the Konstantinovsky palace, his official residence in the Gulf of
Finland.

The CIS was formed as a way to ensure a ‘civilised divorce’ after the
1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. But hopes that it could turn into
a kind of European Union have faded.

Tense ties between some members have made formal discussions
difficult.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, locked in a bitter territorial
conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, met on Saturday and Putin hosted
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Saakashvili has enraged Russia by driving his Caucasus country away
from reliance on Russia and seeking membership of the European Union
and the NATO military alliance.

INERTIA

"The inertia of separation (in CIS) turned out to be stronger than
integration efforts," Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told the
economic forum before the CIS summit.

But Nazarbayev, who now holds the rotating CIS chairmanship, sounded
more upbeat when he met his colleagues at the Konstantinovsky palace.

"Cooperation within the CIS is an important element of foreign policy
of its members," he said.

Analysts say boosting integration with ex-Soviet states — Moscow’s
traditional powerbase — has become increasingly important for
Russia, which is looking for a new global role encouraged by several
years of strong economic growth.

Putin, who ends his eight-year presidency next year, has improved
ties with strategically important Central Asian neighbours
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, who have major energy
reserves.

Moscow has struck deals with the three which could revive the united
Soviet-era network of pipelines to ship gas to Europe via Russia and
pledged to step up cooperation in making them a railway transport
link between Europe and Southern Asia.

A free-trade zone negotiated between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus
is also seen in Russia as an example of how ex-Soviet states could
integrate.