Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Nino Burdjanadze (left, seen here with Russian Federation Council speaker Sergey Mironov) has doubts about the CIS.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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The Commonwealth Betrayed
// Speaker of the Georgian parliament finished off CIS
Yesterday's session of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly ended with the biggest scandal that forum has ever seen. Speaker of the Georgian parliament Nino Burjanadze called the CIS “nonexistent” and threatened to block Russia's accession to the WTO. In response, speaker of the Russian State Duma Boris Gryzlov cancelled his meeting with her.
There has usually been a friendly atmosphere at CIS activities. Representatives of member states, whether presidents, prime ministers of parliamentary speakers, spoke calmly and agreed with good spirits that the organization needs to be reformed. Until yesterday, they had always observed an unspoken rule that the CIS would not be criticized in public.
That rule was broken yesterday by speaker of the Georgian parliament Nino Burjanadze. On the eve of the assembly's full session, she was heard to say that the CIS is not only ineffective, but has even ceased to exist as an international organization. “I have expectations connected with the CIS,” she said. “As a matter of fact, that organization doesn't exist and it cannot suggest any ways out of situations developing.” For that reason, she continued, Georgia does not intend to pay its dues to the CIS until the organization becomes effective. “We have not paid dues for many years,” she stated. “First Georgia had certain difficulties, and now it is a determined gesture, since we do not see any effectiveness in the organization.”
Burjanadze named the current poor relations between Russia and Georgia as the clearest example of the CIS's torpor and said that basic principles of the organization has been trampled by xenophobia and the deportation of Georgians from Russia. “How can I show my colleagues from parties that insist on withdrawing from the CIS that there is any sense at all in remaining in it?” she asked. “Why is the CIS silent when one member state threatens another? How can we speak of effectiveness when there was not a word on the agenda here about how two CIS states are practically on the brink of war?” Burjanadze blamed Moscow for the situation. “CIS members should think about who is violating the principles of the CIS – Georgia, which is speaking about the ineffectiveness of the organization, or the country that imposes economic blockade and sets political prices on its natural gas.”
Burjanadze said that Georgia intended to resist its more powerful neighbor, and planned to use its membership in the World Trade Organization to do so. “The WTO is based on principles of free trade and free movement of freight. Russia is violating those principles in relation to Georgia. Economic sanctions and a practical blockade have been imposed. In that connection, we cannot allow Russia to enter that organization, although Georgia will not be against it if Russia renounces its policy.”
Speaker of the Russian Federation Council Sergey Mironov reacted to Burjanadze's statements by calling them subjective. “There are undeniable problems in relations between Russia and Georgia,” he admitted, “but there is a greater number of countries in the CIS. If we have an unsettled issue in bilateral relations, we consider it necessary to discuss them and find a solution.” Mironov also suggested how Burjanadze should justify her country's CIS membership. “One of the structure of the CIS is the Interparliamentary Assembly, where you can openly, if subjectively, in my opinion, express your opinion.”
Other members of the Russian delegation reacted with less magnanimity. Speaker of the Russian State Duma Boris Gryzlov refused to attend a previously scheduled meeting with Burjanadze. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was to begin, a representative of the Duma leader announced that the meeting would be cancelled because of Gryzlov's tight schedule. “I received a refusal from Gryzlov again,” Burjanadze observed. “That is not very positive for our relations.”
Burjanadze's behavior may lead to new tensions in Russian-Georgian relations. It comes on the eve of a summit of the presidents of the CIS member states in Minsk scheduled for the end of the month. Georgia has repeatedly made it clear that a bilateral meeting between the Russian President Vladimir Putin and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili would be desirable during that summit in order to discuss issues that have arisen. Moscow had promised to think about it, but Putin may now treat Saakashvili the same way Gryzlov did Burjanadze.
Vladimir Solovyev
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 17, 2006
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