A STRATEGY FOR REFORM
By Shaun Walker

Russia Profile
id=International&articleid=a1181912889
June 15 2007
Russia

Will the Talk at the CIS Summit Translate into More Action?

Although most of the guests in St. Petersburg last weekend came
for the economic forum, at the same time, an informal summit of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was held. The very existence
of the organization, which includes all the former Soviet countries
with the exception of the three Baltic States, has come into question
recently. Needing to reinvigorate the alliance, the leaders of the 12
member states met for around 40 minutes on Sunday in a casual setting.

This was the first time in many years that the leaders of all the
constituent nations were present at a summit, with Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili attending after being promised a head-to-head
meeting with Vladimir Putin, and new Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly
Berdymukhammedov also putting in an appearance. His predecessor
Saparmurat Niyazov – Turkmenbashi – had degraded the country’s
membership to associate status, and rarely attended CIS summits.

The main news to come out of the event was that plans have been drawn
up to change the format and workings of the organization, although
exactly what this will involve remained vague. "At the informal
gathering in Moscow in June 2006, I suggested to my colleagues various
ways of reforming the CIS," said Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president
of Kazakhstan and holder of the rotating CIS presidency, in remarks
to journalists after the informal summit. Plans have been drawn up
by a working group involving all CIS countries, and these will be
discussed at the next formal meeting of the leaders of participating
countries, which will be held in early October in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

The one big change that was announced in St. Petersburg was that from
now on, the CIS will discuss only one issue per year, and attempt to
make real progress on that issue alone. Kazakhstan has put forward
migration as the first such topic. Nazarbayev pointed out that 10
percent of the CIS’s 130 million-member workforce was migrants. "In the
second year, we will look at the issue of transport and communications,
and after that will come energy and then education," proposed the
Kazakh president.

The drive to reform the CIS comes amid mutterings that the commonwealth
is losing its relevance and being overtaken by other organizations. A
whole host of other regional groupings and alliances of various forms
exist. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization groups the Central Asian
States along with Russia and China; the Collective Security Treat
Organization binds seven of the CIS countries in a military pact;
GUAM unites four of the more Western-leaning CIS countries in a loose
alliance that is often perceived as anti-Russian; while the Eurasian
Economic Community links five CIS countries including Russia with
the aim of implementing a customs union.

Still, analysts were skeptical that the changes would amount to
anything meaningful. "Russia is not interested in making the CIS a
working organization; it prefers to use it as a discussion club,"
said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs
magazine. "Russia has a different approach to every country in the CIS,
and is more likely to use it to further bilateral relations."

Over the past few years, political changes in many of the CIS
countries – and political constancy in others – have led to a
fragmented organization where bilateral relations between many of the
members are uneasy. "The cause of the problem lies in the fact that
the countries of the region have developed very different economic
systems," said Nazarbayev in an interview with Moskovskiye Novosti in
the run-up to the informal summit. "This is the main barrier holding
back trade and the free movement of capital, services and labor,
as well as regional cooperation. We need to create a new format of
cooperation, based on effective economic cooperation based on the
principles of a common market."

This is a somewhat optimistic analysis, since most would agree that
it’s not just divergent economic systems that divide the CIS, but
radically different political priorities that have played a key role
in straining bilateral relations. "The CIS was built on the assumption
that all its members have something in common," said Lukyanov. "This
is now very outdated – there is almost nothing in common between
Tajikistan and Ukraine, for example."

When Georgia’s unambiguous desire to join NATO, and NATO and EU
desires among the Moldovan and Ukrainian leadership, are added to
the mix, it makes for an uneasy commonwealth. Georgia has on many
cases stated that it is only a matter of time before it withdraws,
and its relations with Russia provide perhaps the sorest spot in the
alliance over past years. In addition to Moscow’s uneasy relations with
many of the CIS states, there are also plenty of localized disputes
between former members, such as Azerbaijan and Armenia’s conflict
over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, or the Ferghana
Valley region, which often threatens relations between Uzbekistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The other main intrigue at the informal summit was around the
appointment of a new executive secretary for the organization. No
official announcements were made, but Kommersant reported that Russia
had intended for former chairman of the Russian Central Elections
Commission Alexander Veshnyakov to take up the post. Veshnyakov was
relieved of his duties in March and was tipped to take over from
outgoing executive secretary Vladimir Rushailo. But, according to
Kommersant, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko vetoed the
appointment, apparently because of past criticisms of elections in
Belarus by Veshnyakov. The summit ended without an announcement on
who would take over from Rushailo, whose two-year tenure finished
on Thursday.

The bilateral meeting between Putin and Saakashvili was followed by
statements from both sides that some progress had been made on the
easing of the Russian economic blockade on Georgia. But, in their
conversation in front of the press before the meeting, both presidents
were in combative mood. "I know that, unfortunately, now there are
problems with supply of electricity and we hope Georgian electricity
technicians will solve the problem soon," said a concerned Putin,
referring to an energy blackout that hit Georgia the day before
the meeting.

Despite frosty relations, though, Lukyanov felt that Georgia was
unlikely to leave the CIS any time soon. "They keep saying they will
leave, but why? It doesn’t cost them anything and it’s the only forum
where Putin and Saakashvili can talk," he said. So, despite all the
talk from some countries of reform, and from others of dissolution,
the most likely outcome seems to be more of the same.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress