DUSHANBE, October 10, 2009, Asia-Plus — The CIS summit in the Moldavian capital Chisinau ended with the signing of several documents and the CIS chairmanship transfer from Moldova to Russia.
According to Russia’s Itar-Tass, CIS Executive Committee Chairman Sergey Lebedev said, “A key document signed by delegation heads is a joint action plan of anti-crisis measures presented by Russian Vice-Premier and Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin.” The chiefs of state also decided the pronounce 2010 the Year of Veterans and to prepare for celebrations of the 65
th
anniversary of VE-Day.
In all, 22 documents were summit at the Chisinau summit. “The signed documents aim to enlarge multifaceted cooperation in the CIS and to promote practical results of the decisions made in the economy, migration, energy and other spheres,” Lebedev said.
The CIS leaders agreed to deepen humanitarian integration and security cooperation and to continue optimization of CIS activity. They approved additional measures for strengthening border security and signed some other documents.
Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov represented Tajikistan at the CIS summit that was held in Chisinau on October 9. We will recall that the leaders of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have also sent their regrets and these countries will be represented by lower-level delegations.
In the meantime, the October 9 October “RFE/RL News” article “Russia Facing Resistance with Allies on CIS’s Southern Flank” by Bruce Pannier noted that Russia”s relations with the three states that make up the southern flank of the Commonwealth Of Independent States — Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan — have suffered severe setbacks of late.
Uzbekistan has annoyed the Kremlin by scaling back its participation in Russian-led security organizations, and by passing a customs law that promises to heavily tax Russian companies involved in production-sharing agreements that deal with the export of Uzbek natural gas.
According to the article, Tajikistan allegedly wants Russia to pay rent on military bases Kremlin forces have used since the closing days of World War II and recent incidents involving some of those Russian troops have angered Tajik communities.
Turkmenistan is unhappy with the state of its natural-gas dealings with Moscow and is awaiting the reopening of a key gas pipeline that exploded in early April and for which it blames Russia”s Gazprom.
The decision not to attend by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev — who is perhaps the biggest booster of the CIS, after Russia — came as a complete surprise in Astana and his office offered no explanation for the move.
