GUUAM Revives on the Basis Of Mutual Security

On May 24-25 a meeting of foreign ministers of the GUUAM member countries took place in Tbilisi. This was a preliminary meeting before the summits first on the level of parliaments heads (June 3, Kyiv) and then presidents (July, Yalta). The meeting’s communiqu О states that the member states — Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova — “proceeded with a dialog on mutual efforts to combat terrorism and transnational crime, strengthening borders and customs control.” Draft agreements were prepared on founding a computer center, an international information forwarding center, and a memorandum on mutual understanding in the spheres of trade and transport. These documents are to be signed at the summit of the heads of the GUUAM states.

The first interesting aspect of the Tbilisi meeting is that heads of the foreign ministries of the GUUAM countries met with Linn Pasco, the US Deputy State Secretary for Europe and Eurasia.

The second is that while Georgia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan were represented by foreign ministers, Moldova sent its national coordinator, and Uzbekistan — its ambassador to Azerbaijan. In diplomacy such things are evidence of many things, in part, the level of the countries’ real interest.

Finally, the third interesting thing is that on the eve of the meeting Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Azerbaijan Abdugafur Abdurakhmanov announced that his country would not take part in the agreement On Free Trade within GUUAM signed at the last year’s Yalta summit. Only a year ago Kyiv claimed that precisely Tashkent was less interested in developing cooperation and that it had already frustrated a meeting on economic issues. It appeared that the joint vector of interests is not trade and economy but security issues, and this is the range of problems the US is ready to support.

Perhaps this is what gave Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Zlenko grounds for speaking about the viability and availability of GUUAM, which secures stability and safety in the region. By all accounts, previous statements of Tbilisi representatives on the possibility of Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan moving toward NATO together appear to have some basis in this context. It is no mere coincidence that on the eve of the Tbilisi meeting Romania and Bulgaria inquired about the possibility of obtaining observer status in GUUAM.