#19 - JRL 2006-167 - JRL Home
Russia Profile
July 24, 2006
Conspicuous by Their Absence
Future of CIS in Doubt After Four Leaders Failed to Show Up
By Dmitry Babich

The most significant aspect of the weekend’s CIS summit in Moscow was the number of national leaders who chose not to attend the meeting. Of the 12 presidents invited, only eight showed up. In reference to the G8 summit recently hosted by Russia, at which all of the invitees were present, the Moscow meeting was mockingly referred to as the “Little 8” by journalists in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

The four absentees gave various explanations for missing the impromptu summit, but a lack of seriousness does not bode well for the long-term prospects of the 15 year old organization.

The reclusive president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, stopped attending CIS meetings in the early 1990s. Niyazov, who has ruled Turkmenistan since 1990 and recently turned down an offer from the country’s parliament to proclaim him president for life, defended his absence as a way of preserving the nation’s neutrality. Given his history, Niyazov’s decision to spend his summer vacation on the shores of the Caspian Sea rather than in Moscow failed to raise many eyebrows.

“Turkmenbashi [Niyazov’s self-decreed title, which means “the father of all Turkmen”] has created one of the most bizarre personality cults on the territory of the former Soviet Union, so his snubbing CIS summits does not do any damage to this organization’s international standing and democratic credentials,” said Arkady Dubnov, a journalist and a human rights activist specializing in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Armenian President Alexander Kocharian was reportedly ill. Given that Kocharian is an active participant in CIS activities, his explanation is likely true.

The absences of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko are more difficult to write off.

Georgian-Russian relations are at an all time low and Saakashvili’s decision to skip the summit does not do much to improve matters. Saakashvili refused to attend after Putin declined an invitation to meet with him one-on-one – an unfortunate turn of events since the leaders have many issues to discuss. Georgia recently announced its plans to renegotiate its agreement on Russia’s WTO membership due to Russia’s unprecedented ban on Georgian wine imports. Additionally, Georgia’s parliament decided last week to require the withdrawal of all Russian peacekeepers from the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The peacekeepers have been operating there since the early 1990s under a CIS mandate, so the summit could have provided a useful venue for discussing their removal, had Saakashvili decided to attend.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had perhaps a more weighty matter to deal with at home. The factions in the Ukrainian parliament are continuing a [yet unresolved] battle for power raging since March parliamentary elections. Recently a coalition of Socialists, Communists and the Party of the Regions nominated Yushchenko’s former rival Viktor Yanukovich as prime minister, but before a vote could be taken, Yulia Tymoshenko and the deputies of her eponymous bloc walked out. Some observers noted that Yushchenko had already stated that he would take 15 days to consider Yanukovich’s candidacy, so he could have spared a weekend in Moscow to attend the summit.

But what possible future can await an organization whose members no longer care to attend its meetings?

“I am afraid the CIS is dead now,” said Ivan Starikov, a member of the opposition Union of Right Forces party and a former member of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. “After the start of Putin’s second term, Russia’s interest in maintaining the fraternal bonds of the former Soviet Union began to decrease.”

More optimistic observers suggest that while CIS may be toothless now, it could have some impact in the future when the former Soviet republics become more independent from Russia.

“Putin was right when he called the CIS an agency for a civilized divorce [of the Soviet Union],” said Natalya Narochnitskaya, deputy chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on Foreign Policy. “But we should keep it just in case. It does not cost us much.”

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, came to Moscow with a plan for CIS reform. According to this plan, the CIS governments would focus on the few specific spheres in which the organization could play a meaningful role, such as transportation, migration and energy.

“We should make decisions that would suit all the members [of the CIS],” Nazarbayev was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. “There should be no case when a state signs an agreement and then does not fulfill it. Decisions should be taken by consensus and be obligatory to everyone.”

By pointing out that the agreements made should be upheld, Nazarbayev was clearly taking a swipe at Ukraine, which fulfills its obligations to the CIS only to the extent that they do not harm the country’s bid to join the EU. So far, Ukraine has not followed through with its CIS-mandated agreements, including the formation of a Joint Economic Space between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, agreed by the four nations in 2003.

“This was Ukraine’s policy under [former president Leonid] Kravchuk, under [former president Leonid] Kuchma and there are no reasons to believe it will be different under President Yushchenko,” said Lidiya Kosikova, a leading research fellow at the Institute of Economy of the Russian Academy of Sciences who specializing on CIS issues.

So far, Yanukovich nominally supports Ukraine’s membership in the CIS, as long as it does not affect integration with the EU, but former Prime Minister Tymoshenko, hoping for new elections which could return her to power, says that a choice must be made – either the CIS or the EU.

“We have two ways before us. One leads to Europe, democracy and honest life. The other one leads back, towards the empire,” Tymoshenko said on Sunday.