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15.06.07
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Will The Talk At The CIS Summit Translate Into More Action?
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By Shaun Walker
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An informal summit promises changes to make the CIS a more meaningful organization, but internal differences mean that the organization will probably remain a talking shop.
Although most of the guests in St. Petersburg last weekend came for the economic forum, at the same time, an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was held. The very existence of the organization, which includes all the former Soviet countries with the exception of the three Baltic States, has come into question recently. Needing to reinvigorate the alliance, the leaders of the 12 member states met for around 40 minutes on Sunday in a casual setting.
This was the first time in many years that the leaders of all the constituent nations were present at a summit, with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili attending after being promised a head-to-head meeting with Vladimir Putin, and new Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also putting in an appearance. His predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov – Turkmenbashi – had degraded the country’s membership to associate status, and rarely attended CIS summits.
The main news to come out of the event was that plans have been drawn up to change the format and workings of the organization, although exactly what this will involve remained vague. “At the informal gathering in Moscow in June 2006, I suggested to my colleagues various ways of reforming the CIS,” said Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan and holder of the rotating CIS presidency, in remarks to journalists after the informal summit. Plans have been drawn up by a working group involving all CIS countries, and these will be discussed at the next formal meeting of the leaders of participating countries, which will be held in early October in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The one big change that was announced in St. Petersburg was that from now on, the CIS will discuss only one issue per year, and attempt to make real progress on that issue alone. Kazakhstan has put forward migration as the first such topic. Nazarbayev pointed out that 10 percent of the CIS’s 130 million-member workforce was migrants. “In the second year, we will look at the issue of transport and communications, and after that will come energy and then education,” proposed the Kazakh president.
The drive to reform the CIS comes amid mutterings that the commonwealth is losing its relevance and being overtaken by other organizations. A whole host of other regional groupings and alliances of various forms exist. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization groups the Central Asian States along with Russia and China; the Collective Security Treat Organization binds seven of the CIS countries in a military pact; GUAM unites four of the more Western-leaning CIS countries in a loose alliance that is often perceived as anti-Russian; while the Eurasian Economic Community links five CIS countries including Russia with the aim of implementing a customs union.
Still, analysts were skeptical that the changes would amount to anything meaningful. “Russia is not interested in making the CIS a working organization; it prefers to use it as a discussion club,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “Russia has a different approach to every country in the CIS, and is more likely to use it to further bilateral relations.”
Over the past few years, political changes in many of the CIS countries – and political constancy in others – have led to a fragmented organization where bilateral relations between many of the members are uneasy. “The cause of the problem lies in the fact that the countries of the region have developed very different economic systems,” said Nazarbayev in an interview with Moskovskiye Novosti in the run-up to the informal summit. “This is the main barrier holding back trade and the free movement of capital, services and labor, as well as regional cooperation. We need to create a new format of cooperation, based on effective economic cooperation based on the principles of a common market.”
This is a somewhat optimistic analysis, since most would agree that it’s not just divergent economic systems that divide the CIS, but radically different political priorities that have played a key role in straining bilateral relations. “The CIS was built on the assumption that all its members have something in common,” said Lukyanov. “This is now very outdated – there is almost nothing in common between Tajikistan and Ukraine, for example.”
When Georgia’s unambiguous desire to join NATO, and NATO and EU desires among the Moldovan and Ukrainian leadership, are added to the mix, it makes for an uneasy commonwealth. Georgia has on many cases stated that it is only a matter of time before it withdraws, and its relations with Russia provide perhaps the sorest spot in the alliance over past years. In addition to Moscow’s uneasy relations with many of the CIS states, there are also plenty of localized disputes between former members, such as Azerbaijan and Armenia’s conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, or the Ferghana Valley region, which often threatens relations between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The other main intrigue at the informal summit was around the appointment of a new executive secretary for the organization. No official announcements were made, but Kommersant reported that Russia had intended for former chairman of the Russian Central Elections Commission Alexander Veshnyakov to take up the post. Veshnyakov was relieved of his duties in March and was tipped to take over from outgoing executive secretary Vladimir Rushailo. But, according to Kommersant, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko vetoed the appointment, apparently because of past criticisms of elections in Belarus by Veshnyakov. The summit ended without an announcement on who would take over from Rushailo, whose two-year tenure finished on Thursday.
The bilateral meeting between Putin and Saakashvili was followed by statements from both sides that some progress had been made on the easing of the Russian economic blockade on Georgia. But, in their conversation in front of the press before the meeting, both presidents were in combative mood. “I know that, unfortunately, now there are problems with supply of electricity and we hope Georgian electricity technicians will solve the problem soon,” said a concerned Putin, referring to an energy blackout that hit Georgia the day before the meeting.
Despite frosty relations, though, Lukyanov felt that Georgia was unlikely to leave the CIS any time soon. “They keep saying they will leave, but why? It doesn't cost them anything and it's the only forum where Putin and Saakashvili can talk,” he said.
So, despite all the talk from some countries of reform, and from others of dissolution, the most likely outcome seems to be more of the same. |
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