Putin Urges Ex-Soviet Bloc to Preserve CIS
AP Online;
May 09, 2005
HENRY MEYER
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday urged other leaders in a
12-nation ex-Soviet bloc to preserve the troubled Commonwealth of
Independent States, as Ukraine’s president said there was little use
for the organization without major reform.
At a summit held the day before commemorations of the 60th anniversary
of the defeat of Nazi Germany, Putin said the grouping of 12 out of
the 15 former Soviet republics had a key role in combatting the spread
of terrorism, extremism and xenophobia and fostering peace.
“For all of us it is obvious that Nazism, extremism and terrorism are
threats feeding on a single ideological source, a terrible threat,
against which we are obliged to defend our unique and peaceful
commonwealth,” Putin said.
“The new generation of our citizens should know the truth about the
events of those days. To know that truth means having an internal
immunity to the propaganda of extremism and xenophobia, national and
religious incitement,” he said, adding that the CIS could help with
such work.
The meeting convened amid growing questions about the viability of the
CIS, which brings reformist leaders together with entrenched
Soviet-era autocrats following the popular uprisings against regimes
in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said after the summit there was
“little use” at present for the CIS but its members still needed an
organization that would focus on economic integration and avoid
interfering in the politics of its members.
Yushchenko said he raised his concerns with other CIS leaders and
although he insisted that Ukraine was not leaving the CIS, he warned
that his patience for reform was not infinite.
“If you forcibly damage interests of any country, it could easily
reject this (CIS) project,” he told The Associated Press.
Putin himself in March questioned the body’s usefulness, saying it had
been created for a “civilized divorce” of Soviet republics, unlike the
European Union, which worked to pull its members closer together.
But on Sunday he said that six decades after the end of what Russia
terms the Great Patriotic War, the fraternity the peoples of the
Soviet Union felt as they fought in World War II was still palpable
today. Maintaining “historical unity” was a good basis for stable
development of the countries, he said.
In a reflection of the disputes between the member countries, two of
the leaders, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliev, did not attend.
Saakashvili was staying away from Sunday’s meeting, as well as
Monday’s Victory in Europe Day celebration in Moscow, because Georgia
failed to win agreement last week on the removal of Russian bases it
regards as a legacy of Moscow’s imperial domination.
Aliev was boycotting because of the attendance of Armenian President
Robert Kocharian, and because Sunday is a day of mourning, marking a
key battle during the six-year war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over
the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The CIS was born in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and its
advocates hoped it would foster closer integration between the newly
independent countries. Many of its initiatives have foundered,
however, including plans to remove trade barriers that have dominated
the CIS agenda since its creation _ and it has long been criticized
for being little more than a talking shop.
The group’s attempts to prove otherwise have often only fostered more
discord. Its peacekeepers have been accused of destabilizing conflict
zones in the former Soviet Union, and its election monitors _ deployed
to provide a counterbalance to Western-dominated observer missions _
have consistently given high marks to blatantly fraudulent ballots.
Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, where the government is also looking
West, are aiming for membership in the EU and NATO, and they have
forged close ties within a rival organization that does not include
Russia as they seek to throw off Moscow’s influence.