Vedomosti wrote that Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov preferred bilateral contacts to the CIS summit. In a special address to the Kazan summit participants, he asked CIS leaders to recognize Turkmenistan's special status - that of an associated member. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Turkmenistan will now sign a separate agreement with the CIS.
"Turkmenistan has never been an active member of the CIS, and Niyazov has always preferred bilateral contacts on specific problems," Vladimir Frolov of the Effective Politics Foundation said. He added, though, that he did not regard Niyazov's decision as a serious blow to the CIS.
Other leaders claimed the CIS would not be buried. Even Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said the Commonwealth had not exhausted its opportunities and remained a good "mechanism for consultations."
The CIS helped avoid bloody uprisings in post-Soviet countries such as Yugoslavia, Andrei Ryabov of the Carnegie Moscow Center said. "Everyone knows the CIS is no longer viable, so no one is doing anything to save it."
Energy and Finances Institute President Leonid Grigoryev said that throughout the last five years, only four post-Soviet countries' economies have managed to maintain a positive trade balance by exporting oil and gas, whereas others have had to export labor and agricultural products to survive.
"But CIS disintegration does not mean the process of integration in post-Soviet countries will stop," Ryabov said. The Common Economic Space (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine) and the Eurasian Economic Community (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan) will replace the CIS. These organizations will continue to work along the lines of economic, security, humanitarian, and cultural cooperation, Vedomosti concluded.
