Ex-Soviet leaders discuss reform of troubled Moscow-led regional body
AP Worldstream; Jul 22, 2006
HENRY MEYER
President Vladimir Putin and leaders of seven other ex-Soviet nations
met in the Kremlin on Saturday to discuss reforming a troubled
regional body seen as a key lever of Russian influence in the former
Soviet Union.
Four presidents did not attend the two-day informal summit in Moscow
_ a sign of the divisions within the 12-nation Commonwealth of
Independent States.
The no-shows included the pro-Western leaders of Ukraine and Georgia as
well as traditional Russian ally Armenia and the authoritarian leader
of isolated Turkmenistan, who does not usually come to such events.
Putin, who has watched with concern at the rise of Western-backed
governments on Russia’s borders, said the meeting should concentrate
on plans to revamp the CIS, which was born from the ashes of the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union.
"I know that the chairman has prepared a report on the development
of the organization. I suggest we focus on that," he said in remarks
shown on state television.
Few details of the proposed reforms have been made public.
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose oil-rich Central Asian
nation holds the rotating presidency of the CIS, said the aim of the
reform was to make the body "satisfactory to us all, so that no state
feels hard done by."
He indicated that the loose grouping should concentrate on economic
ties _ a move that could help keep in the fold Georgia, Ukraine and
Western-leaning Moldova, which are all seeking to move out of Russia’s
shadow and have expressed skepticism about the future of the CIS.
Putin himself in March 2005 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 the CIS and a series of overlapping parallel security and economic
blocs represent the main mechanism for Moscow’s leadership role in
its former empire, and Russia is eager to preserve it.
The tensions within the group, though, were evident as Georgian
President Mikhail Saakashvili canceled his trip to Moscow at the
last minute because of a flare-up between Russia and the small
U.S.-allied Caucasus Mountain nation over Russian support for two
separatist regions.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko also decided not to attend the
meeting, ostensibly because of his country’s continuing political
turmoil, four months after parliamentary elections.
Yushchenko is facing the unpalatable prospect of the man he beat
for the presidency in 2004, the Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych,
taking the powerful prime minister’s job. The president’s Orange
Revolution rival came out ahead in the March polls and has a formed
a pro-Russian coalition that has put forward
Yanukovych for the premier’s job.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian did not attend the meeting,
his office said, explaining that he has a cold.
The informal summit began with dinner Friday evening at a waterside
restaurant in an upscale Moscow suburb and was to conclude Saturday
with a visit to the track for a horse race dubbed the Russian
President’s Cup.