“We agreed to joint work on the preparation and conclusion of a treaty on European security. That is a very important step,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted yesterday triumphantly.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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Georgia Gets a Collective Assessment
// With support from the CSTO
Russian diplomacy acieved an important triumph in foreign relations yesterday. At the Moscow meeting of the foreign ministers of the Collective Security Treaty Organization a joint statement was adopted that laid all the blame for the conflict in South Ossetia on Georgia. At the same time, the members of the organization gave support to a package of Russian proposals touching on global security, including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s idea of developing a European treaty. Moscow will try to build upon that success at the CSTO summit today.
Yesterday’s meeting of the foreign ministers of Collective Security Treaty Organization member states brought Russia the success it was hoping for in its pursuit of international support for its actions relative to Georgia. The statement issued at that meeting is the most pro-Russian assessment yet of the recent war in the Caucasus. The document adopted by this group of seven – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – expresses support for “the Russian Federation’s active role in contributing to peace and cooperation in the Caucasus.” They advocate “a guarantee of firm security for South Ossetia and Abkhazia based on the United Nations Charter and the 1975 Helsinki Accords” and insist on “the rigorous fulfillment of the settlement principles developed by the president of the Russian Federation and president of France,” that is the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan.
The most pleasant part of the document for Russia is where the CSTO countries express “grave concern over the military actions undertaken by the Georgian side in South Ossetia that have led to numerous civilian victims and the deaths of Russian peacekeepers and a severe humanitarian crisis.”
Thus the group has unanimously laid all the blame for the recent conflict in the Caucasus on Tbilisi, which is very important for Russia at the moment. This is especially so after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit where members expressed nothing more than “grave concern in connection with tension arising around the South Ossetian question” and called for “a peaceful resolution of the existing problem.” A high-placed source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Kommersant, “The CSTO is not the SCO. There were complications with China, but our closest and most loyal partners in both the economic and politico-military sphere are in this bloc.”
In addition to the CSTO member states’ assessment of the events in the Caucasus, Russia was gratified by the approval of its initiatives on global security. They supported the development by Moscow and Washington of new treaties to replace the arms-reduction treaty that expires in a year and agreed to create a treaty on European security in its stead. That is the proposal of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made in the new concept for Russian foreign policy in the middle of July. “We agreed to joint work on the preparation and conclusion of a treaty on European security. That is a very important step,” commented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov yesterday.
Moscow will try to build on its success at today’s session of the CSTO Collective Security Council, in which the presidents of the member states will take part. “There are plans to adopt a final document at the summit as well, and now there is reason to expect its tone to be consistent with what we need,” a source in the Foreign Ministry said optimistically. A substantive communiqué is expected to be adopted today, with an assessment of the conflict in South Ossetia and of the general situation in the world and the CSTO’s role in it. Russia is also advancing the idea there that the communiqué should be a programmatic document in which an unambiguous statement on the impermissibility of the further expansion of NATO toward the borders of the member states and the placement of elements of American missile defense in the zone of interest of that organization stands alongside the condemnation of Georgia.
In the midst of the numerous statements by the CSTO member states, it has gone unnoticed that none of its members has approved Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which is also a high priority for Russian diplomacy today. In essence, Russia’s partners have successfully extracted themselves from a dilemma. They have fulfilled their obligation as allies and given Moscow their support. But they have done so in such a way that they will avoid angering the West. No one can fault them even for the anti-Georgian passage in the CSTO final statement, since the fact that Georgia began military actions in South Ossetia first was acknowledged by the European Parliament. All the same, Russia now has to make efforts to find sympathizers ready to follow its example in recognizing the two Caucasian republics. Now that Nicaragua has done so, it will be at least a tiny bit easier for Moscow.
Vladimir Solovyev
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 05, 2008
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