ANALYSIS: The GUAM summit (05/28/06)

ANALYSIS: The GUAM summit

by Liz Fuller
RFE/RL Newsline

On the sidelines of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg in October 1997, the presidents of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova proclaimed the formation of a new geopolitical alignment named GUAM. The stated aim of that alignment was to promote and defend the four members' strategic interests - a euphemism for their shared desire to counter, with tacit U.S. support, Russia's ongoing efforts to retain its dominance over the former Soviet republics.

More than eight years later, at a GUAM summit in Kyiv on May 23, the four countries' current leaders formally announced their desire to secure recognition of GUAM as an international organization under a new name: the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM.

They further adopted a new charter, rules of procedure and financial regulations, and a statement reaffirming their shared commitment to democracy, the rule of law, human rights and freedoms, and ensuring regional stability and, crucially, their desire for increased cooperation with NATO and the European Union.

That latter pronouncement is guaranteed to irritate Russia, which from the outset reacted to GUAM with mistrust and hostility, perceiving it as a secret weapon with which the United States planned to emasculate the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). At a CIS summit in March 1997, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin had advocated openly undermining those pro-Western CIS states that sought to break away from Russia's sphere of influence.

Those misgivings on Russia's part are the primary reason why defense and security cooperation has never figured prominently among GUAM's priorities, at least not publicly - although concerns over the concessions to Russia contained in the 1997 amendments to the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe were one of the reasons for GUAM's creation.

The member-countries' defense ministers have met periodically, but proposals for military cooperation, including forming a GUAM peacekeeping battalion, never came to anything. Instead, the presidents of the GUAM member-states in their public statements have consistently stressed the anticipated benefits of economic cooperation, especially the construction of export pipelines for Caspian oil and gas that bypass Russian territory.

Speaking in May 2000 at a joint presentation by GUAM ambassadors to the U.S. Senate, Azerbaijan's Hafiz Pashayev highlighted three main priorities: political interaction among member-states in their respective efforts to integrate more closely into Euro-Atlantic and European structures, and to establish closer cooperation with NATO; economic cooperation, including the establishment of a Europe-South Caucasus-Asia transport corridor; and countering ethnic and religious intolerance. Three of the four initial GUAM members, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova, were at the time of its inception, and still are, seeking solutions to deadlocked ethno-territorial conflicts with former autonomies.

The decision in 1998 to route the so-called Main Export Pipeline for Azerbaijan's Caspian oil from Baku via Tbilisi to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan - a decision that Washington wholeheartedly supported - served to strengthen GUAM.

Uzbekistan formally joined the alignment in 1999 in a demonstration of its then pro-Western orientation, but "suspended" its membership in June 2002 and in 2005 quit the organization altogether.

Uzbekistan's "suspension" of its GUAM membership in 2002 heralded a period of inactivity that led at least some commentators to question whether GUAM had a future, and whether Moldova, too, might terminate its membership.

But the advent to power in Georgia and Ukraine in late 2003 and late 2004, respectively, of new, unequivocally pro-Western leaders breathed new life into the grouping. It was Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko who, at a GUAM summit in Chisinau in April 2005, first proposed transforming GUAM into a new international regional organization with its own office, its own secretariat and its own plan of action.

The May 22-23 Kyiv summit saw that proposal become reality. Speaking at a press conference after the summit, Mr. Yushchenko announced that he and his fellow presidents had also signed a protocol oncreating a free-trade zone and a customs union, rosbalt.ru reported.

On May 22 the four GUAM foreign ministers signed a protocol on temporary trade rules intended to pave the way for the free-trade zone. Mr. Yushchenko first floated the idea of a GUAM free-trade zone five years ago, when he was Ukraine's prime minister.

Counter to the expectations of some Russian commentators, none of the four presidents announced in Kyiv that his country will withdraw from the CIS. Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili has repeatedly hinted at that possibility in recent weeks, but prior to his departure for Kyiv he said that decision should be made by the population as a whole, presumably in a referendum. In Ukraine and Moldova, too, senior politicians have alluded to the possibility of leaving the CIS, but Azerbaijan has ruled out doing so.

The contrast between the unequivocally pro-Western and pro-NATO orientation of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova and Azerbaijan's more ambivalent position was underscored by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev's statement in Kyiv on May 23 that cooperation within the energy sector will be GUAM's first priority. Those diverging priorities may in the medium term give rise to tensions among GUAM's four members, as may the economic coordination required to establish the free-trade zone.

| Home Page |