BLACK SEA FORUM SEEKING ITS RATIONALE
By Vladimir Socor
Rompres, Moldpres, Interfax-Ukraine, AzerTaj, June 5, 6
Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
June 8 2006
Russia snubs summit of Black Sea leaders Presidents Traian Basescu of
Romania, Vladimir Voronin of Moldova, Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine,
Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, Robert Kocharian of Armenia, and
Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan were joined by senior officials from the
United States, Turkey, Bulgaria, and international organizations
at the inaugural session of the Black Sea Forum for Partnership and
Dialogue on June 4-6 in Bucharest.
A Romanian initiative, the Forum is tentatively meant to hold annual
presidential-level summits — the venues rotating among participant
countries — and thematic or sectoral-cooperation meeting during
those annual intervals. The Forum is not meant to create new regional
institutions, but rather to turn into a regular consultative process
among countries of the extended Black Sea region (defined as including
the South Caucasus to the Caspian Sea) and between this group of
countries and international organizations such as the European Union.
Russia refused to send a delegation to the Forum; instead, it merely
authorized the ambassador to Romania, Nikolai Tolkachev, to sit
in as an observer, without taking part in discussions or signing a
concluding document. Moscow had turned down the Forum initiative as
soon as Bucharest announced it last December: Russia’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs publicly deprecated the proposed Forum as redundant,
duplicative of existing cooperation frameworks, and apt to siphon
off limited resources from those frameworks (Interfax, December
13, 2005). From that point on and practically until the Bucharest
session’s eve, Russia turned down entreaties to join the Forum as a
participant and to send an official delegation on a ministerial or
some other decent level.
Officially, Moscow maintains that existing cooperation frameworks
such as the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) and the joint naval
activity Black Sea Force (Blackseafor) are adequate in themselves as
well as the only possible basis for deepening regional cooperation.
Tolkachev reiterated this position to local media during the summit,
thus in effect sniping at the Forum from the sidelines. Moscow finds
BSEC and Blackseafor to its liking because it can dominate them jointly
with Turkey and can also use them to promote Russian objectives in
the region.
There is, however, a broader political message in Russia’s dismissive
attitude toward the Forum: It suggests, first, that it is not for
“lesser” countries to take major regional initiatives on their own that
are not worked out with Moscow; and, second, that no regional project
can be successful without Russia’s participation — a proposition that
has almost become reflexive in Black Sea diplomacy and that Moscow
tries to reinforce by distancing itself demonstratively from the Forum.
Nevertheless, Forum organizers hoped until the last moment to secure
a decent-level Russian representation at the founding session as well
as participant status for Russia in the Forum down the road. This
consideration loomed large in shaping the summit’s agenda in a way that
would not risk irritating Moscow. In this regard, the Forum summit
duplicated (instead of learning from and avoiding) the experience of
the December 2005 summit of the Community of Democratic Choice (CDC)
in Kyiv. There, President Viktor Yushchenko’s forlorn hope (tied to
the electoral campaign) to induce Russian President Vladimir Putin to
visit Ukraine trumped the CDC’s own democracy-promoting goals and made
for a bland, irrelevant agenda at that summit. Similarly in Bucharest,
the shadow of absentee Russia weakened the Forum’s agenda and raised
unnecessary question marks about the rationale of this initiative.
Energy transit and the secessionist conflicts — those uppermost
policy issues in the extended Black Sea region — seemed almost lost
among a wide variety of issues on a kaleidoscopic agenda. Several
participating heads of state did not avoid addressing the conflicts.
Thus, Saakashvili described the latest claims by Russia-sponsored
secessionist movements to legitimacy through a “democratic referendum”
as a “cannibal-style democracy”: It involves the violent seizure
of a territory, ethnic cleansing, despotic rule, and criminality,
all of which is then to be crowned by a referendum and claims for
international recognition on such a basis, Saakashvili noted.
For his part, Voronin criticized the draft of the Forum’s concluding
declaration for failing to identify the external source and sponsor
of the secessionist conflicts: Resolving the conflicts will not be
possible if the external factor is not identified with the necessary
clarity, Voronin observed. Aliyev declared that Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity would not be subject to negotiations; while
Kocharian characterized Karabakh as a “classic case of secession
through self-determination” — a formulation seemingly in line with
Moscow-led recent attempts to provide a “model” for post-Soviet
conflict resolution. Aliyev and Kocharian held five hours of
inconclusive talks, including a working dinner with Basescu, during
the two days of the Bucharest summit.
Yushchenko’s speech harked back to the 2005 CDC, although that
initiative does not seem to have survived its birth. He also urged,
as he had then, Black Sea countries to co-invest in a project to
build a massive industrial center and transport hub at Donuzlav on
Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, without providing specifics; and he called
for coordination among Black Sea, Caspian, and Baltic countries in
addressing energy problems. Yushchenko held a news conference for
Ukrainian journalists, presumably dealing with deepening instability
back home, and prompting the local press to complain of being excluded.
Aliyev’s speech, delivered extemporaneously, stood out for reflecting
the political stability and bright economic prospects of Azerbaijan,
possibly the most successful among the region’s countries at
this stage. The speech exuded quiet confidence in the strategy of
evolutionary political and economic reforms on parallel tracks and
the advance of Azerbaijan from a regional to a global role in energy
projects.