Crawling CIS Summit :: Charter'97 :: News

The Commonwealth of Independent States, which has been long perceived as a politically dead structure, seems to reanimate. The initiative emanates from president Vladimir Putin, who has been particularly active these days. The head of Russia initiated unscheduled meeting with the incumbents of five CIS countries in Moscow on February 23. Pundits wonder why on earth would he need to stage what they call “a crawling CIS summit”, for since the moment of their last meeting in Kiev there has passed less than a month.

On Monday Vladimir Putin rang up his colleagues Leonid Kuchma and Alexander Lukashenko, inviting both to Russia. Official version of the unscheduled meeting is quite weird: the presidents claim that they intend to jointly celebrate the Day of homeland’s defenders. On Tuesday Putin insistently asked Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, who was on an official visit to Moscow, to put off his Wednesday departure and the man agreed to stay in Moscow till February 23. The president of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmonov also plans to join the company of CIS member-states’ presidents.

Putin made an arrangement with Eduard Shevarnadze of Georgia to meet in early March in Moscow, holding a long conversation on Tuesday with Geidar Aliev. Whatever they spoke about, their conversation ended in Russian secretary of the Security Council Vladimir Rushailo’s sudden visit to Baku.

Emergency of the planned meeting of presidents of the CIS states and the cloak of secrecy surrounding it, testify to the fact that Putin and Co intend to discuss most serious and urgent issues. According to the “NG” analysts, they will concentrate on Europe’s polarized attitude towards the Iraqi problem’s solution. Seemingly, Putin will call on the CIS heads of states to uphold Russia’s Iraqi policy. Common rival can also become great motivation for deeper unity and the promotion of Russia’s influence in CIS.

Andrei Sannikov, former deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus:

“The meeting of presidents can well be provoked by the situation development around Iraq. Acute international conflict requires consultations with the neighboring states anyway. But they won’t enjoy equal status in that. For instance, Russia is directly involved in the conflict’s resolution, while Belarus is in the limelight for a different reason. Lately the western press widely covered the interaction of the Belarusian and Iraqi regimes in the military spheres. The situation with Iraq is explosive and soon there may start the combat operation, which, among other things, may bring to light unfavorable contacts of Minsk and Saddam’s regime.