Editor’s note: WND’s multi-lingual reporter Toby Westerman
specializes in monitoring global shortwave broadcasts and reading
foreign-language news journals for information not readily available
from the domestic press. Each month, Westerman presents a special
in-depth report in WorldNetDaily’s monthly magazine, WorldNet. Readers
may
subscribe to WorldNet through WND’s online store.
By I.J. Toby Westerman
© 2000, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
“Greater peace and security” in the world are due to “the increased influence globalization is having on mankind’s political and economic progress,” according to a joint statement released by a group of former Soviet republics preparing for the upcoming United Nations Millennium Summit to be held in New York City Sept. 6-8.
The signatories of the joint statement hope that the Millennium Summit will work toward “building a multi-polar world and promoting global security.” The former Soviet republics issuing the statement are all members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, successor entity to the defunct U.S.S.R.
“Regional and sub-regional integration is all-important … because it helps tackle social and economic problems,” according to the signers of the joint statement.
The statements were carried by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.
The CIS summit took place in Yalta, now part of Ukraine, on Aug. 18 and was cut short from the scheduled two days to one. Russian President Vladimir Putin — the acknowledged leader of the CIS — was forced to attend to the increasingly dire news regarding the sunken Russian submarine, the Kursk.
Without Putin’s presence, the other 11 members of the CIS were unable to continue the formal summit meeting. The members did hold what the Voice of Russia referred to as a “one day informal meeting” which centered upon the discussion of “multi- and bi-lateral cooperation,” a “common CIS stand,” in advance of the U.N. Millennium Summit. They also issued the joint statement on the summit itself.
The Millennium Summit will take place following the Millennium Assembly, which will open on the afternoon of Sept. 5. The U.N. is billing the summit as “likely to be the largest single gathering of heads of state and/or government ever held in the world.” The U.N. General Assembly designated the “turn of the century” as “a unique and symbolically compelling moment … to articulate and affirm an animating vision for the United Nations in the new era.”
“The summit will be a historic opportunity to agree on a process for fundamental review of the role of, and challenges facing, the United Nations in the new century,” according to the U.N. sources.
The ability of the CIS members at Yalta to come to a “common stand” in advance of the Millennium Summit — even without Russian leadership — confirms Moscow’s recent boast that Western attempts, especially by NATO, to lessen Russia’s hold on the nations of the CIS have failed.
Despite Western efforts since the fall of the Soviet Union to lure the newly independent former Soviet republics away from Russia, Moscow remains the dominant partner among them. Of the 15 republics that comprised the former Soviet Union, only the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have slipped from Moscow’s grasp.
“In the military area,” according to a recent statement from Moscow, the Soviet republics that comprise the CIS “find it more beneficial to cooperate with Russia” than NATO, adding that “the future [of these states] belongs to integration” with Russia.
NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo crisis is held as an object lesson for the commonwealth members.
“All of us have seen how NATO tried to resolve the Kosovo crisis with bombing. The CIS countries are hardly likely to want to see such things happening to themselves,” according to Moscow.
According to an analysis carried on the Voice of Russia, “Russia … must act as the locomotive of integration for that part of the Commonwealth which wants to participate in the process.”
In addition to growing military cooperation with Moscow, the former Soviet republics continue to bind themselves closer to Russia in a number of areas.
The Central Asian republics are joining with Moscow in a common power grid that will stretch from Europe far into Asia. The Caucasus republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are also joining in a common power grid with Russia.
The Stalinist republic of Belarus has gone farther than any of the other former Soviet Republics by forming a Union State with Russia. At present, Russia and Belarus are negotiating the merger of their two economies, including their currencies.
Related story:
World government meeting in September