Leaders of former Soviet republics hold brief, informal summit in Yalta (08/27/00)

Leaders of former Soviet republics hold brief, informal summit in Yalta

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The Kursk tragedy in the Barents Sea completely overshadowed the first informal summit of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the regional organization of countries that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union, organized by Ukraine for August 18-19 in Yalta.

While presidents from nine of the 12 CIS member countries attended, including President Vladimir Putin of Russia, to discuss regional commerce, the stalled development of a free trade zone, oil and gas transportation routes, and crisis resolution plans for the region, the developments surrounding the fate of the 118 member crew of the Russian submarine Kursk did not allow them to focus exclusively on the issues at hand.

Citing a need to be in Moscow to track the events occurring in the Barents Sea, President Putin stayed less than a day, which caused major changes in the summit agenda. Without Russia's full participation, the gathering had little ability to make headway on most matters.

The summit leaders signed a single, relatively inconsequential document in support of the upcoming United Nations Millennium Summit, scheduled for New York in September. Ukraine has been one of the lead countries in organizing a special meeting of the Security Council in conjunction with the U.N. summit, at which global security strategies will be reviewed.

Mr. Putin's early departure from the meeting and the absence of the presidents of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyztan, two of whom would be key players in any regional oil and gas discussions, effectively changed the structure of the summit to a series of informal and private bilateral meetings between the leaders, held mostly on the second day.

Nonetheless, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, the meeting's host, said he was pleased with the results, particularly with his one-on-one talks with Mr. Putin, with whom he met before the general meeting of CIS leaders.

"We have discussed all the issues involved in bilateral relations and made decisions on many of them," said Mr. Kuchma, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

The discussions between the leaders centered on economic matters for the most part, in particular on the subject of free trade. It is an issue in which Russia is not all that interested, but one which the other CIS countries, particularly Ukraine, have pushed for nearly two years. Russia will benefit less than the other member states from such an accord, which would erase all import tariffs among them. According to Mr. Kuchma's press secretary Oleksander Martynenko, the presidents of Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan continued to support such an agreement. He said the leaders decided to pursue a new step-by-step approach to the issue.

During his meeting with the Russian president, Mr. Kuchma also discussed the unresolved issues of Ukrainian gas indebtedness and future supplies of Russian energy to Ukraine. He told Interfax-Ukraine that he and Mr. Putin had formally agreed on the restructuring of Ukraine's debt, which had been decided preliminarily by a bilateral commission six months earlier. No details of the agreement were announced.

On the eve of the summit Ukrainian organizers decided to cancel much of the festivities that were planned for the CIS leaders, including a cruise on the Black Sea aboard the steamship Taras Shevchenko and a visit to the Yalta 2000 International Folklore Festival, after it became increasingly evident that the situation in the Barents Sea would not improve.

"The summit participants believe that while a struggle continues for the lives of the submarine crew, participation in any entertainment events would be improper," explained Mr. Martynenko at the time.

Then on Friday morning the presidents decided to change the site of their meeting to the government dacha, Zoria, in Foros, a small tourist town located at the tip of the Crimea, about 35 kilometers west of Yalta, to accommodate the desires of Mr. Putin for a speedy visit. Originally the leaders were to have met at the Livadia Palace in Yalta, where in 1945 the leaders of the victorious Allied Powers divided Europe.

President Kuchma issued a statement on the Kursk tragedy on the summit's first day. He said that for Ukraine it is a "double sorrow," because many members of the crew were Ukrainians who had originally remained a part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Sevastopol after it was divided between Russia and Ukraine, before being transferred to Murmansk, where the submarine tragedy occurred. Murmansk is a home port for much of Russia's northern fleet.

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