A jubilee CIS summit has just kicked off in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe, but not all of the CIS presidents chose to attend it. The Belorussian and Ukrainian presidents confirmed their participation in the meeting in the very last moment, while the Uzbekistani and Azerbaijani leaders are not going to come to the summit.
Arthur Rasizade, Azerbaijan’s PM, is representing his country instead of Ilham Aliyev at the Dushanbe summit. Baku is trying to emphasize the fact that it isn’t, as the media hastened to assume, disregarding the summit but, on the contrary, is sending its top official to the meeting.
The refusal of President Aliyev to participate in the jubilee summit triggered a lot of speculations among journalists and experts. These discussions seem to attribute special attention to the assumption that the Azerbaijani president refused to attend the 20th anniversary CIS summit to demonstrate his discontent with the Russian president’s inability to come to a conclusive decision on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. However, a more attentive look would reveal that over the past few years Russian-Azerbaijan relations have turned into a stable strategic partnership, and mutual respect and balance of interests is the basis for this friendship. And if Baku tries to send Moscow a message that it isn’t doing enough to settle the Karabakh conflict, that comes into a striking contradiction with Azerbaijani officials’ statements.
During the latest meeting of the Russian and Azerbaijani presidents that took place in August in Sochi, Ilham Aliyev said that positive dynamics can be seen in all aspects of Russian-Azerbaijani relations. He also expressed his gratitude personally to Dmitry Medvedev for his contribution to the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. As for the absence of sensational results in the Karabakh talks during this Sochi meeting: well, they were not to be expected, as the third party, the Armenian side, was not present. So the statement about certain disagreements between Russian and Azerbaijani Presidents regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh situation is groundless. On the contrary, Baku showed its dedication to the peace process and to Medvedev’s initiatives by being the first to reply to Lavrov’s proposal, made after the Russian foreign minister’s visit to the region.
So Aliyev’s absence at the summit is not a political message to the Russian president. Azerbaijani continues to fulfil its CIS obligations and has never expressed any intention to leave the organization. It is possible that, at the moment, Baku is more inclined to develop bilateral relations with Russia than with the whole organization, but that doesn’t mean that Azerbaijan is going to quit the CIS.
The Commonwealth of Independent States was created in the hope of promoting a spirit of cooperation and understanding between its members in order to facilitate conflict settlements. However, a number of hot spots still exist between the organization’s members and unfortunately the CIS can’t always provide the best and the simplest way to resolve these protracted conflicts. Today’s CIS looks more like a debating society than a coordinating center. However, despite its shortcomings, the CIS is still the only international organization that unites the majority of ex-Soviet republics. And its future depends on whether it will manage to become an acting force benefiting its members well-being or not.
Elmira Tariverdieva, exclusively to VK
