CIS states have no single approach to organisation future-Shuvalov.

20/1 Tass 95

BISHKEK, January 20 (Itar-Tass) - Member countries of the Commonwealth
of Independent States (CIS) have no single approach to the future of this
organisation, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said at a
meeting with Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Daniyar Usenov in Bishkek on
Wednesday.

Shuvalov arrived in the Kyrgyzstan capital as a national
coordinator for the CIS affairs from Russia that is presiding in the
Commonwealth this year.
According to Shuvalov, Turkmenistan remains an associated CIS member,
and Uzbekistan often "reserves relations in some formats." "Within the
framework of Russia's presidency in the Commonwealth we want to specify
the format of its future development," the RF first deputy prime minister
said. He also noted that Russia within the CIS this year will be
"advancing numerous projects," but they will meet the interests of all
member states of the organisation. He added that many documents are
adopted inside the CIS, however, some countries approve them with
reservations or do not sign at all, therefore "it is necessary to agree on
priority projects."
Shuvalov stressed that in connection with the presidency in the CIS
Russian officials intend before the beginning of celebrations of the 65th
anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War (against Nazi
Germany in 1941-1945) to visit all member states of the Commonwealth,
starting from Central Asian states where "a vast number of various
interests are concentrated."
Usenov for his part noted that the times when the CIS served "a
mechanism of cultural divorce" of the former Soviet republics are gone,
and at present the activity of the Commonwealth should promote the
mutually advantageous cooperation of its member states.
The CIS was founded on 8 December 1991 by the Republic of Belarus, the
Russian Federation, and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries
met in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 miles)
north of Brest in Belarus and signed a Creation Agreement on the
dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of CIS as a successor
entity to the USSR. At the same time they announced that the new alliance
would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as
other nations sharing the same goals. The CIS charter stated that all the
members were sovereign and independent nations and thereby effectively
abolished the Soviet Union.
On 21 December 1991, the leaders of eight additional former Soviet
Republics - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,
Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan - agreed to join the CIS, thus
bringing the number of participating countries to 11. Georgia joined two
years later, in December 1993. As of that time, 12 of the 15 former Soviet
Republics participated in the CIS. Three former Soviet Republics, the
Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania chose not to join.
In March 2007, Igor Ivanov, the secretary of the Russian Security
Council, expressed his doubts concerning the usefulness of CIS, and
emphasizing that the Eurasian Economic Community became a more competent
organization to unify the biggest countries of the CIS. In May 2009 the
six countries Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine
joined the Eastern Partnership, a project which was initiated by the
European Union (EU).
When Yeltsin became Russian Defence Minister on 7 May 1992, Yevgeny
Shaposhnikov, the man appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the CIS Armed
Forces, and his staff, were ejected from the MOD and General Staff
buildings and given offices in the former Warsaw Pact Headquarters at 41
Leningradsky Prospekt on the northern outskirts of Moscow. Shaposhnikov
resigned in June 1993. In December 1993, the CIS Armed Forces Headquarters
was abolished. Instead, 'the CIS Council of Defence Ministers created a
CIS Military Cooperation Coordination Headquarters (MCCH) in Moscow, with
50 per cent of the funding provided by Russia.' General Viktor Samsonov
was appointed as Chief of Staff.
The Creation Agreement remained the main constituent document of the
CIS until January 1993, when the CIS Charter was adopted. The charter
formalized the concept of membership: a member country is defined as a
country that ratifies the CIS Charter (sec. 2, art. 7). Turkmenistan has
not ratified the charter and changed its CIS standing to associate member
as of 26 August 2005 in order to be consistent with its UN-recognized
international neutrality status. Although Ukraine was one of the three
founding countries and ratified the Creation Agreement in December 1991,
Ukraine did not to ratify the CIS Charter and is not a member of the CIS.
Russia has been urging that the Russian language receive official
status in all of the CIS member states. So far Russian is an official
language in four of these states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and
Kyrgyzstan. Russian is also considered an official language in the region
of Transnistria, and the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Viktor
Yanukovich, a presidential candidate in the controversial Ukrainian
presidential election, 2004, declared his intention to make Russian an
official second language of Ukraine. However, Viktor Yushchenko, the
winner, did not do so, since he was closely aligned with the
Ukrainian-speaking population.
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