Yalta: Capital of Baltic-Mediterranean Pragmatism?
The GUUAM (Georgia- Ukraine-Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan- Moldova) summit ended in Yalta on June 7, transforming this association into an international organization. Leonid Kuchma even proposed to rename it. The GUUAM Charter and a consular convention were signed. The free trade zone agreement scheduled to be signed was not. The president of Uzbekistan explained that the issue requires more expert examination, although there are no special reasons for not signing it, reports Interfax Ukraine. Pres. Islam Karimov believes that free trade is “the content of the GUUAM ideology” and the need to work more on it comes from Georgia and Moldova being members of the World Trade Organization, meaning they cannot sign without consulting the WTO. But the ice has been broken, even if not without a hitch. Pres. Karimov said that the free trade agreement could be signed later.
An organization has been set up, hitherto subject to long debate, focused on what GUUAM is really all about: an economic alliance, transportation corridor, or a military- political bloc. At times, it was ascribed magical properties denied by all members. Russian politicians and analysts, who opposed GUUAM from the outset as counterweight to the CIS, theoretically continued the process of its formation to the creation of a military organization, relying on factors best known to themselves. In addition, GUUAM, although stated to be an association “directed against no one,” does affect the interests and ambitions of states claiming at least regional leadership. Perhaps for the first time an organization has been founded by former Soviet republics where Russia is not the economic core or political generator. This aspect alone guarantees that GUUAM’s worth will be challenged on more than one occasion.
The Yalta summit was the third but not last episode in a long diplomatic series starring Pres. Kuchma. The first was the CIS summit in Minsk where the destiny of the CIS was to be decided (although it had long been decided by many) and that of GUUAM. Russia’s rigidly pragmatic self-interested stand, Vladimir Putin’s “friendly” statement, actually informing Ukraine that the free trade zone had been de facto formed under bilateral agreements excluding Ukraine, could not but offend the ambitions of Ukraine’s elite. Pres. Kuchma publicly complained that he had learned about Russia’s VAT on imports only from the mass media.
This also served to disperse what illusions might have still been harbored by other CIS countries. Everyone can see that the Commonwealth of Independent States had ended in a civilized legal separation and that keeping it alive any longer in the format programmed a decade ago is practically impossible. Likewise, the destiny of the Yalta GUUAM Charter, consular convention, and free trade agreement (being still composed) was now clear.
There was, however, another link between Minsk and Yalta: the Ukrainian-Polish business forum in Dnipropetrovsk, the results of which Moscow could not help but criticize. Minsk and Yalta both marked steps toward the European community, ardently loathed by Moscow as it steps away from it.
The GUUAM free trade zone was proclaimed inadequately drafted at Islam Karimov’s initiative, but it would have been naive to expect an absolutely free trade zone from the very beginning. As it was, Dnipropetrovsk and Yalta seem to have drawn a Tbilisi-Warsaw curve to counterpoise the Moscow-Minsk curve of pragmatism. Considering that Italy is the next point on President Kuchma’s travel itinerary, where he is to attend the Central European summit, the obvious question is, What pragmatism will be more viable, Minsk-Moscow or Dnipropetrovsk-Yalta? The fact that Moldova did not leave the “well-disposed ranks” of GUUAM, contrary to what a number of analysts had predicted and despite Vladimir Voronin’s attempts to come up with his own version of pragmatism, speaks well of the new organization. And the fact that the United States has announced its preparedness to cooperate with GUUAM and that Ukraine will continue to participate in Central European processes, thus offering better membership opportunities to Romania and Bulgaria (the idea had been earlier discussed in Kyiv and was now voiced by Eduard Shevardnadze), shows that the new political and economic center of gravity created in Yalta has real prospects.
