PUTIN LIFTS WINE BAN FOR MOLDOVA
By Maria Levitov
Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Russia
Nov 29 2006
Vladimir Rodionov / Itar-Tass
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yushchenko heading into a
meeting during a CIS summit in Minsk on Tuesday. Behind them are
other CIS leaders.
President Vladimir Putin used a Commonwealth of Independent States
summit in Minsk on Tuesday to lift the ban on wine and meat imports
from Moldova.
"We agreed on the resumption of shipments of meat and wine from
Moldova to Russia," he said late Tuesday after talks with Moldovan
President Vladimir Voronin, Interfax reported.
Putin also announced that Gazprom would form a 50-50 joint venture
with Belarussian state gas monopoly Beltransgaz. In televised remarks,
Putin said the details of the deal would be worked out by the end of
the year.
No further information on the deal was made available late Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Gazprom indicated that it might charge Belarus
less than $200 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas — the price it is
currently demanding — in exchange for more gas pipeline assets.
Russia suspended imports of wine from Moldova and Georgia last
March, citing health concerns. Both Voronin and Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili complained that the ban had more to do with their
aspirations to escape Moscow’s influence and move closer to the West.
The wine ban took a heavy toll on the economies of both countries.
Business Analytica, an industry consultancy, said that in 2005,
Georgian and Moldovan wines accounted for some 44 percent of all
in-store wine sales in Russia.
Saakashvili also asked the Kremlin for a face-to-face meeting with
Putin in Minsk, but was turned down.
The lifting of the Moldovan wine ban was the highlight of the 15th
annual CIS summit, which produced few other positive results.
Importantly, the 12 member states failed to agree on how to reform
the organization, which is increasingly viewed as obsolete.
"In Kazan, we postponed [the implementation of reforms] until Moscow,
and in Moscow until Minsk," Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev
said, RIA-Novosti reported. "Now, we are postponing everything until
Dushanbe," he said, apparently referring to the next CIS summit. A
CIS spokeswoman said, however, that the location of the next summit
had yet to be decided.
The organization’s waning relevance was underscored by the coverage on
Russian state television of a squabble that ensued when two leading
Russian newspapers were denied access to the event for "unfavorable
coverage" of Belarus.
Kommersant and Moskovsky Komsomolets were barred from the summit
because they had published "articles and photographs insulting to
the head of the Belarussian state," Pavel Legkiy, a spokesman for
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, told Interfax.
Despite the incident, which stole the spotlight in Minsk, analysts
said Tuesday that CIS summits remained an important forum where
leaders can meet in person.
In Minsk, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and Azeri President
Ilkham Aliyev discussed the fate of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
republic. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter,
decades-long struggle for the republic, which they both claim.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko met with Uzbek President Islam
Karimov to discuss cooperation on energy resources extraction and
shipping, the RBC Ukraine news agency reported.
Saakashvili did not get to meet with Putin, however. The Georgian
president had hoped to make progress on improving ties between the
two countries, he said in televised remarks Monday.
"I don’t want to insult Georgia and the friendly Georgian people …
but relations with Georgia are not a priority for us at the moment,"
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published this
week in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
Nazarbayev said that while no bilateral meeting was held in Minsk,
Putin and Saakashvili had exchanged opinions during the summit. This
"gives hope" for the warming of Russia-Georgia relations, Nazarbayev
said in televised remarks.
The CIS remains an important platform where heads of state can meet,
but otherwise it lacks relevance, said Alexei Makarkin, deputy general
director of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies.
"It lacks a common idea apart from [providing] a civilized divorce,"
Makarkin said. The CIS was established to ease the transition of its
members to independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Konstantin Zatulin, general director of the CIS Institute, said the
organization would remain a functional political force. "The CIS is
first and foremost a political organization," he said.
Zatulin said the CIS would remain active unless Russia were to pull
out, which would not be in Moscow’s interest. He added that Russia
needed to provide incentives to other member states to compensate
for coming gas price hikes.
Defense Minister Ivanov reaffirmed the Kremlin’s stance that Russia
would no longer supply energy to Georgia, Ukraine or other former
Soviet republics at discounted prices.
"Russia is not obliged to foot the bill for any foreign state as it
has, for example, in Ukraine, covering a $6 billion to $7 billion
annual bill," he said.