DUSHANBE, December 20, 2008, Asia-Plus — Only five presidents, including the president of host country, have attended an informal CIS summit hosted by Kazakhstan, while invitations were sent to seven presidents.
Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev sent his personal invitations to presidents of Armenia (Serzh Sargsyan), Belarus (Alexander Lukashenko), Kyrgyzstan (Kurmanbek Bakiyev), Russia (Dmitry Medvedev), Tajikistan (Emomali Rahmon), Turkmenistan (Gurbanguly Berdumukhammedov) and Uzbekistan (Islam Karimov) to attend the meeting that opened at Kazakh resort town Borovoye on December 19.
In the meantime, the presidents of Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan did not arrive. According to Russian media, Lukashenko was supposed to join the summit participants on Saturday. According to Gazeta.ru, Berdumukhammedov did not confirm his participation at the meeting and Karimov said on the eve of opening of the meeting that he will not attend it.
On Friday, Nazarbayev, Bakiyev, Medvedev, Rahmon and Sargsyan discussed issues related to strengthening of the collective security system within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), joint efforts to mitigate effects of the global financial crisis and strengthen regional integration, according to Gazeta.ru.
Speaking at the summit, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev called for creating a mechanism of sanctions within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) for breaching non-aggression pacts. “We all talked within the CIS about non-aggression, but the conflict unleashed by Georgia shows that they (sanctions) do not work, because we have no sanctions; we have no collective response to such challenges. We must do it within the CSTO framework,” Nazarbayev said, according to Itar-Tass. “Kazakhstan is committed to the essence of this organization (CSTO) and we have to review and adjust the common position. If it”s an organization of allies, we must say so. We have to define these terms,” the Kazakh leader underlined. “Of course, the CSTO is not Warsaw Pact, which was a defense organization, yet, the CSTO must have some armed forces, a formation for responding to challenges,” Nazarbayev added.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that issues of the global financial crisis affected all economies. “Our economies represented at this round table are connected so closely that changes in one of them have an effect on other economies,” he noted. “…If we solve specific tasks and implement project we set, we will be able to adequately respond to this crisis.”
The meeting is going on today.
According to RIA Novosti, Dmitry Medvedev and Nursultan Nazarbayev signed on Friday a joint action plan to deepen their countries” ties in 2009-2010. The plan is aimed at developing bilateral strategic partnerships. It includes 40 concrete measures covering all areas of bilateral cooperation, including politics, energy, space and defense. Nazarbayev said Russia and Kazakhstan could establish a trilateral customs union with Belarus by next April. “As part of the project to establish a customs union of the three states – Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus – 20 documents have already been initialed, and the remaining 12 will be initialed by March, so that by April we could establish such a union,” the Kazakh leader said.
