Kuchma to Putin: “Do Like We Do”
Acting President of Russia Vladimir Putin has been elected new chairman of the council of the Commonwealth heads of states at the CIS summit held last week in the Russian capital. In fact, this election of Mr. Putin became a foregone conclusion after the dinner at Gorky-9, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s country retreat. According to the journalists who covered this summit, the true negotiations of the leaders of former Soviet republics were held on the evening of January 24, when it was decided at dinner that Russia would continue to chair the council of the heads of state (“Boris Yeltsin transferred power to Putin, and there is a decision that the Russian leader will chair the CIS until the end of the prescribed term,” Interfax-Ukraine quotes Leonid Kuchma as saying —Ed.), while Ukraine would chair the council of the heads of governments (new Ukrainian government head Viktor Yushchenko was elected chairman at the meeting of prime ministers).
Otherwise, the CIS summit did not differ from all the previous ceremonial ones. Opening a narrow- circle session, Mr. Putin greeted Eduard Shevardnadze on his birthday and Mr. Kuchma, Emomali Rakhmonov, and Islam Karimov on being reelected to the presidency. To which the President of Ukraine reacted in a confident tone: “Do like we do!” (On the eve of the summit, Mr. Kuchma noted, UNAN reports, that “today we in fact are dealing with the new President of Russia” —Ed.). Mr. Putin informed his Ukrainian counterpart, so pleased with his election victory, that the Russian people will make their choice March 26, leaving the journalists wondering under which — Ukrainian, Uzbek, or Tajik — scenario the Russian people will be allowed to make their choice.
The most important item on the summit’s agenda was discussion of the problem of controlling terrorism. But in this connection of a far greater interest is the meeting of four leaders — Messrs. Putin, Shevardnadze, Geydar Aliyev, and Robert Kocharian — held on the eve of the summit. The Acting President of Russia discussed with the presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia the situation in the North Caucasus and the possibility of joint actions to fight terrorism. It is obvious that Moscow would not like to see the Chechens making use of the Transcaucasus and is worried about negative trends in the Russian- Georgian and Russian-Azerbaijani relations.
INCIDENTALLY
The CIS “must change,” otherwise its future will be in question, Leonid Kuchma on January 24 in Moscow, commenting to journalists on the results of his meeting with Russian Acting President Vladimir Putin. He added that the CIS “in its current form... does not work in most fields, especially in the sphere of information.” Simultaneously, according to Mr. Kuchma, “one cannot say now from any angle that the CIS is unnecessary.” Noting the “inexpediency” of scrapping the Commonwealth as a single body, Mr. Kuchma pointed out that the heads of states and governments “can resolve many things” together.
“The CIS is currently going through a crisis: the integration mechanisms, on which state leaders pinned their hopes, still do not work,” notes KM, a Russian Internet newspaper (http://www.km.ru). “In particular, experts estimate that over a thousand agreements signed by the heads of states and governments have remained letters of intent. Failure to restore economic ties disrupted by the collapse of the USSR caused the share of trade between the Commonwealth states to be not more than a third of their total foreign trade turnover. The situation is being further exacerbated by an annual 15-20% drop in trade turnover, and if this trend continues, we will only have to state that the Commonwealth’s system-forming ties no longer exist and, hence, the disintegration of the whole structure is inevitable. The first signs are already obvious: a number of sub- regional structures have arisen within the CIS framework, such as the Customs Union (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan), GUUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova), and the Central Asian Economic Community (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan). Finally, these structures were complemented late last year by the Union of Russia and Belarus.”
“With Putin in power, everything is changing,” notes Gazeta.Ru (http://www.gazeta.ru). “A pragmatic and in his way cynical person has come to power in Russia. He has no personal links with all these people (other CIS heads of state —Ed.). He is not from their milieu, he will always follow only his own pragmatic interests. In this aspect, the club of CIS leaders is dead. The problems of the CIS proper are now in the foreground. Thus it turns out that there is no CIS at all. It is also obvious that Moscow will no longer be guided by nostalgic motives in its behavior. CIS backstage rumor has it for the first time that Russia is deliberately slowing down even mere talk about integration, let alone projects. This smacks of neoisolationism. Meanwhile, all this also has another side. The metallic glitter in the eyes of Russia’s Acting President is extraordinarily good in dealing with military and intelligence officers. It is good for talking from a position of strength on the use of force. However, purely human attitudes are also of some benefit in diplomacy. They can at times rescue relations between countries even when no pragmatic calculations can indicate this. The CIS rested to a large extent on Yeltsin’s humanity. It is by no means clear that if Mr. Putin speaks only pragmatically with his neighbors, this will necessarily benefit Russia.”
