Ukraine increases involvement in CIS (04/11/99)

Ukraine increases involvement in CIS
Rada Chairman Tkachenko advocates common currency and defense system

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's involvement in the Commonwealth of Independent States deepened on April 1-2, as Ukraine officially entered the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (IPA) as its newest member during a plenary session held in St. Petersburg.

The session was one of two CIS gatherings in Russia during the weekend - the other being the first CIS summit of heads of state in more than a year, held in Moscow - which leaders hoped would reinvigorate the commonwealth and set it on a new path.

The Ukrainian delegation to the IPA, a largely consultative body that represents the national assemblies of 10 of the commonwealth's 12 member-states, made its voice heard even before it officially took its seat. Oleksander Tkachenko, Verkhovna Rada chairman and leader of Ukraine's delegation, called for a single currency and defense system among the members.

"We must consider developing a common currency and a single defense system. The events that surround us show that we must unite to be strong," said Mr. Tkachenko upon arriving in St. Petersburg at Pulkovo Airport, according to Ukrainian Television News.

Mr. Tkachenko has called for a Slavic union comprising Ukraine, Russia and Belarus on more than one occasion, but this was the first time the Verkhovna Rada leader had announced he was for much tighter relations among all the states of the commonwealth.

Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada had repeatedly rejected membership in the IPA, which is heavily dominated by Communists, until Mr. Tkachenko all but ramrodded a proposal for membership through his Parliament on March 3.

Mr. Tkachenko, a member of the Peasants' Party who was elected chairman of the Verkhovna Rada because of his perceived pragmatism, has only expounded on the need for a return to the Moscow fold since assuming that post.

At Polkovo Airport the leader of the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation also said Ukraine must consider giving Yugoslavia military support. "It is our duty and paramount objective to unhesitatingly render humanitarian aid, in the form of food and medical supplies, and, first and foremost, military aid to the people of Yugoslavia," said Mr. Tkachenko, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

His proposal was nipped in the bud by President Leonid Kuchma, who "categorically denied" that any aid would be offered.

"Only politicians with neither soul nor heart are capable of calling for military aid to Yugoslavia," said Mr. Kuchma, who has led a Ukrainian effort to mediate the Kosovo conflict.

"I would counsel those politicians who are proposing this to send their own children and grandchildren, and not to throw Ukraine into that mix," said the president.

President Kuchma also was in Russia on April 2 on CIS business, although several thousand miles to the east in Moscow, where he attended the first CIS Council of Heads of State summit held in more than a year. After the summit's conclusion he expressed satisfaction that he and the 12 other leaders of countries that once were a part of the Soviet Union had revived the organization.

"Today I can say that the CIS does exist," Mr. Kuchma told Interfax-Ukraine after the conclusion of the one-day meeting.

It was a notable change in attitude from just a month earlier, when he had told journalists during a visit to Kyiv by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka that "the CIS barely exists."

With President Boris Yeltsin of Russia ailing and his hold on the reins of power in Moscow tenuous at best, the CIS - which for all practical purposes is run by Russia, whose president controls the chair - has lain nearly dormant. In fact, the CIS has never established a practical purpose or program and has yet to find a definitive reason for its existence.

President Kuchma declared the revival of the commonwealth chiefly on the basis of a series of administrative reforms that were adopted to streamline the heavily bureaucratic organization.

Other than that, the summit attendees did not conclude any striking resolutions or announce any major changes in the mandate of the organization.

The 12 leaders could not agree on how to address the military and civil conflict in the rump Yugoslavia. The presidents did not support a statement condemning the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia - which was strongly advocated by Russia - and instead issued a bland declaration on the need for a peaceful resolution to the Kosovo crisis.

The 12 leaders also failed to show any movement in the settlement of geopolitical disputes in the Moldovan Transdniester region, Georgian Abkhazia and the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Mr. Kuchma announced, however, that in Kyiv on April 9 he would meet with Moldovan President Petru Lucinschi and Ihor Smirnov, the leader of the breakaway Transdniester Republic, along with Russian Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov, to work out a settlement between the two sides.

In Moscow the summit leaders agreed only on a tighter organizational structure for the CIS and on a new executive director. They elected Yuri Yarov, a longtime Russian and Soviet bureaucrat, who had been Russia's vice minister of foreign affairs. Only Russians have led the CIS since it inception in 1992.

President Kuchma gave tepid support to the newly elected executive secretary of the CIS, who seems to have been a compromise choice "He is a well-known and established figure, who is the most acceptable at the present time," said Mr. Kuchma.

The president explained that Ukraine did not present its own nominee because "at the moment there was no candidate that would satisfy everyone."

The summit decided on Mr. Yarov after the wealthy and controversial Russian Boris Berezovskyi, who had served as CIS executive secretary for the last year and whom Mr. Kuchma had supported, fell into disfavor with the government of Prime Minister Primakov and stood little chance of getting re-elected. The presence of Mr. Berezovskyi at the summit was barred, for all practical purposes, after his private plane was not given landing clearances as he was returning to Moscow from Paris.

Mr. Kuchma spoke highly of the ex-CIS head and his accomplishments while at the helm of the CIS - most notably of his efforts to reform the heavily bureaucratic institution. "In the last year he accomplished much," said Mr. Kuchma.

The summit concentrated much of its energy on pushing forward administrative reforms. The attendees agreed to a new CIS structure that will cut the number of CIS subunits from 55 to between 22 and 24 and decrease the number of personnel working in the various departments from 2,340 to 710.

The Council of Heads of State also agreed to examine a Ukrainian proposal that the CIS declare itself a free-trade zone to stimulate its ailing economies. The Ukrainian proposal to do away with customs tariffs would take effect on January 1, 2000.

"This is a necessity for all of us," said President Kuchma, while lobbying for the establishment of the free-trade zone.

Russian President Yeltsin, who also is a proponent of this idea, called the proposal "the key that will start the free trade engine and accelerate economic cooperation in the CIS as a whole."

Mr. Yeltsin - also sensitive to allegations that the CIS is merely a vehicle for the reintegration of the former Soviet republics into a new Moscow-centered empire, which have led some member-countries, among them Ukraine, to keep an arm's-length distance from the organization - once again sought to assure the leaders that Moscow no longer holds ambitions of empire.

"There are neither little nor big brothers among us. Russia is against the creation of supranational structures in the CIS. The level of integration does not call for that," said President Yeltsin.

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