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//The member-states of the Commonwealth of Independent States are too different to stay together
September 28, 2007 - RBC News - A CIS summit will be held on October 4 and 5 in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, where the main item on the agenda will be the reform of the organization. Experts have prepared the concept for the further development of the CIS and mechanisms to implement it, but the format of the CIS is unlikely to change: internal pressure within the CIS is high enough that any drastic change could lead to its collapse. Few people have seen the draft reform program, and the only thing that is known for certain is that it introduces the concept of an annual rotation for CIS presidency. Coordinators overlooking the implementation of CIS resolutions will be replaced annually, too, although there are no sanctions for failure to implement them. The only resolution the summit members could consider binding is the adaptation of national legislations to WTO standards. Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, CIS countries continue to drift apart from Russia, looking increasingly to foreign partners. This is the message that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili are expected to deliver to Vladimir Putin at the summit, as both Lukashenko and Saakashvili have been brought together recently by their alienation from Moscow. In early September, Georgian Internal Minister Vano Merabishvili arrived in Minsk, where Lukashenko assured him of his “excellent” relations with Saakashvili and announced the opening of a Georgian embassy in Minsk and the exchange of diplomatic missions between Belarus and the GUAM nations (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova). Belarus’ membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization is not considered problematic as it does not give Belarus discount for Russian oil. A summit of the Baltic, Black Sea and Caspian Sea countries is scheduled to open on October 11 in Vilnius, with the agenda including plans to lay a section of the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline through Belarus. In return, Belarus would have to correct its foreign policy. Meanwhile, Tajik leader Amomali Rakhmon also has questions for Moscow. Tajik authorities fear that the Russian builders of the Rogun hydroelectric power station will change the water and energy balance in favor of Uzbekistan. Conversations with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will not be easy, either: a Caspian Sea-Russia gas pipeline project has been stalled, while an alternative project from the Caspian Sea to Europe has been gathering momentum. As for Azeri and Armenian leaders, it is unclear whether they will appear at the Dushanbe summit: they prefer to discuss their problems within the OSCE. In fact, Russia itself seems to have turned its back to the CIS, paying more attention to the Eurasian Economic Community, which is scheduled to meet in Dushanbe in early October. “The CIS is turning into what it ought to be: not an integration body but a regional organization for talks, the results of which are not binding,” commented Vladimir Zharikhin, Deputy Director of the CIS Institute. “The Community has taken shape as a presidential club, and it cannot claim a bigger role now,” agrees Alexander Skakov, at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies,” noting that “CIS countries have become too different.”