#8
Georgia-Russia row jolts CIS anniversary summit
November 29, 2001
By Ron Popeski

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Leaders of ex-Soviet states converged on Moscow Thursday to mark the 10th anniversary of the largely moribund Commonwealth of Independent States amid a row over Georgian charges that Russia had violated its airspace.

The CIS was formed in December 1991 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus proclaimed the Soviet Union dead. They hoped the new body would underpin new prosperous states free of communist-era constraints.

But in a decade of existence, the CIS has wielded little political clout and is equally ineffective in regulating ex-Soviet republics' joint economic matters. A handful out of hundreds of decisions have been implemented.

Though a separate 1992 defense pact has taken on added significance with the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, the fresh row between Georgia and Russia was one of a periodic series of disputes between members.

With top ministers meeting ahead of Thursday's summit, Georgian Foreign Minister Irakly Menagarishvili told reporters he would raise complaints that Russian aircraft staged a raid in its remote Pankisi gorge Tuesday night.

Russia says its aircraft were pursuing Chechen rebels on its own side of the border.

"Air control monitors have established that the raid continued for several hours with the participation of at least 13 warplanes and six military helicopters," Menagarashvili said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov dismissed the charges, saying helicopters could not fly at night in the gorge, which borders Russia's separatist Chechnya region.

"Large-scale fighting took place in the Pankisi gorge, close to the Russian-Georgian border, between Arab and Chechen gunmen quarrelling over proceeds from drug trafficking," he said.

The United States, now allied with Russia in the coalition engaged in Afghanistan, has long accused Russia of putting pressure on Georgia. A U.S. State Department spokesman on Wednesday pledged to raise the latest Georgian charges with Moscow.

GEORGIA'S SHEVARDNADZE DECIDES TO ATTEND

Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze told Georgian television he wanted to discuss the incident with Putin.

"I finally took a decision in favor of going there, because we cannot have constant tension between the two countries at such a level," Shevardnadze said. He believed that Putin had been unaware of any decision to make the incursion.

Relations between Russia and Georgia, never easy in the post-Soviet period, have been bedevilled by Russian allegations that Tbilisi is tolerating the presence of Chechen rebels on its territory.

Tension has also risen over action by armed guerrillas in Abkhazia -- a breakaway region of Georgia -- with Georgia suggesting Moscow backed the Abkhazian separatists.

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov set the tone ahead of the summit, pointing to the CIS's limited economic success.

"Over the 10 years, trade turnover is now a third of its previous level, so you can say our countries have become a sort of purveyor of raw materials," he told fellow prime ministers.

In the run-up to the summit, Putin met several leaders and was shown on television telling Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev that he had asked Yeltsin to attend.

"An hour ago, I asked Boris Nikolayevich to take part," he said of Yeltsin, who appeared in good health when attending a Moscow tennis tournament in October. "He was there when it (the CIS) got started."

It was not certain whether Yeltsin, who resigned on New Year's Eve 1999 and turned over the presidency to Putin, would attend.