Will the Moldovan Pothole Stop GUUAM?
The emergence of a Communist-dominated parliamentary republic in Moldova spells a hazy future for GUUAM, a structure which was supposed to be made into an international organization at a summit in Kyiv. Now the summit has been postponed until April, in the wake of new declarations by Moldovan Communist leader Vladimir Voronin that he will seek admittance to the Russo- Belarus union for Moldova. GUUAM, however, has been seen, if not as a counterweight, then as a coalition parallel to the Russian-Belarus union and also to the Customs Union which has already grown into a Eurasian Economic Commonwealth, which seems to be potentially a much more formidable structure than GUUAM.
“This is as clear now as it was back in 1997 in Strasbourg, when the plans to create GUUAM were first discussed,” Director of the Institute for the Study of Ukrainian- Russian Relations Serhiy Pyrozhkov stated, addressing a forum organized by his Institute and German’s Ebert Foundation.
“I was never convinced that GUUAM would carry much weight,” Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, said speaking at a round table in The Day’s editorial office. Meanwhile, former President Petru Lucinschi of Moldova noted that there is no need to turn GUUAM into a formal organization.
When Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova created this informal union (later joined by Uzbekistan), their leaders focused primarily on the participation of their countries in the creation of a Transcaucasus transport corridor for pumping Caspian oil to Europe. Later on, the GUUAM agenda was enlarged to include such topics as the Eurasian transport corridor, cooperation in tourism, and cultural and humanitarian exchanges. In addition, the leaders indicated their interest in establishing a free trade zone. To meet such tasks, it was agreed to turn GUUAM into an international organization by signing its charter and a free trade agreement. In Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ihor Kharchenko’s view, the Organization for Cooperation in the Black Sea Region has not got off the ground for lack financial reasons, while the Eurasian Economic Commonwealth is merely at the stage of declaring its aims and its base organization, the Customs Union, is not effective due to the tug-of-war policies of its member states. Obviously, Ukraine sees GUUAM as a path to mutually beneficial economic cooperation.
According to Academician Pyrozhkov, some influential Russian politicians see no threat to Russia’s interests in GUUAM, provided it functions merely as an economic union. The Caucasus republics, however, insist on the expansion of GUUAM’s agenda to include political and security issues. Ukraine believes that GUUAM could strengthen stability in the region, but not as a military or collective security union, amid assessments by the analysts of the situation in the Caucasus as a security vacuum, especially in view of the radically different approaches by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the Karabakh conflict. It is clear now that GUUAM can provide a competitive route for the Caspian and future Kazakh oil transit to Western Europe, as the cost of pumping a ton of oil via Novorossiysk is $5 higher than via the GUUAM route.
GUUAM could become a first truly free trade area and truly equal customs union in the CIS. GUUAM might also be attractive to the West as a lucrative transport corridor. It could also frighten away Western investment because of Karabakh, Abkhaziya, Transnistria, and its proximity to Afghanistan.
All this gives experts reason to state that GUUAM today is more a project than a reality, but a project acquiring features of reality and beginning to influence current realities.
