GEORGIA TO QUIT CIS AUGUST 18, 2009

PanARMENIAN.Net
23.10.2008 12:30 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Georgia will formally quit the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) on August 18, 2009, said Nauryz Aydarov,
deputy chairman of the CIS executive committee.

"The committee has already launched the essential procedure," he said.

Georgia notified (on August 18, 2008) the CIS executive organs
of the unanimous decision of its parliament to leave the regional
organization, and according to the CIS Charter (sec. 1, art. 9) this
decision will come into force 12 months after the notification date.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional organization
whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics. The
organization was founded on December 8, 1991 by Belarus, Russia,
and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries signed an
agreement on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation
of CIS as a successor entity to the USSR. On December 21, 1991,
the leaders of eight additional former Soviet Republics – Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
and Uzbekistan – joined the Creation Agreement, thus bringing the
number of participating countries to 11. Georgia joined two years
later, in December 1993.