Tuesday, October 19, 2000 - Volume VI, Issue 195
MONITOR -- A DAILY BRIEFING ON THE POST-SOVIET STATES

GUUAM

MEMBER COUNTRIES MOVE TOWARD INSTITUTIONALIZING GUUAM. While Russia redoubles its efforts to assemble five other CIS countries into a Moscow-led military, political and economic bloc (see the Monitor, October 10-11, 16), an equivalent number of countries are distancing themselves from the Russian orbit and from the CIS itself. Those are the countries in the GUUAM group--Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova—as well as Turkmenistan outside that group. The Russian-accredited concept of a "CIS space" becomes meaningless as that would-be space splits into two groups of countries. And as an official analyst in Tashkent remarked this week, GUUAM--stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia--is no less "Eurasian" in scope than the bloc-in-the-making under Moscow.

Just as significantly, GUUAM now holds the potential for westward enlargement in Europe outside the CIS. Enlargement in that direction would help blur the temporary demarcation lines which would result from the evolutionary process of eastward enlargement of the European Union and NATO. That consideration partly accounts for Romania's willingness to consider joining GUUAM in some form or other, probably with an observer's status initially. Such a move on the part of Romania and also of Bulgaria could, furthermore, increase their chances in the competition over transit routes for Caspian oil and gas to Europe. It could also render Romania and Bulgaria more attractive as links in the TRACECA--the Transit Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia--project of the European Union. Georgia's President Eduard Shevardnadze has taken the lead in suggesting that Romania and Bulgaria should consider joining GUUAM. Those two countries are situated directly across the Black Sea from Georgia, on the shortest route from the South Caucasus into Danubian and Central Europe.

A Romanian and/or Bulgarian move toward GUUAM could, moreover, stimulate NATO's cooperation with the two countries as well as with those in the existing GUUAM. While encouraging Romania' and Bulgaria's intentions to
meet the qualifications for membership, NATO stops short of taking such a position with respect to Ukraine, Georgia or Azerbaijan. In practical terms, however, NATO's cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia is more advanced than with Romania and Bulgaria. An enlarged GUUAM could help erase the lingering distinctions of status among countries that once "belonged" to the Soviet Union and those that did not. It could redound to the benefit of all concerned by lending impetus to the five countries' relations with NATO in both the political and the military sphere.

Unlike the Moscow-led group, GUUAM does not propose to form a bloc and has no leading country. At its western and eastern ends, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have in recent days taken significant steps toward a rapprochement both
bilaterally and in the GUUAM framework. On an official visit to Tashkent, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma agreed with his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov on measures for "mutual support, regionally and internationally, in confronting challenges and threats to their stability and security." They called for setting up an international antiterrorism center under a UN aegis--evidently a counterproposal to Moscow's plan for a CIS antiterrorism center under Russian leadership. Kuchma and Karimov agreed, furthermore, on Ukrainian arms and ammunition supplies to Uzbekistan, servicing of Uzbek military inventories and deliveries of Ukrainian-designed new models of arms to Uzbek forces.

Concurrently, Azerbaijan's Defense Minister Safar Abiev discussed with his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksandr Kuzmuk in Kyiv the creation of a joint battalion of GUUAM countries. Current plans envisage fielding that battalion in 2002, for missions which range from peacekeeping operations to protection of oil and gas pipelines. In Tashkent, Baku and Kyiv, all the officials involved in these meetings confirmed the intention to hold a summit of GUUAM early next year in Kyiv and to empanel now a joint commission that would draft the documents and decisions to be adopted at the summit (Tashkent Radio, Khalk Sozy (Tashkent), Turan, ANS, UNIAN, October 12-17; see the Monitor, March 10, 20, 22, September 12, 26).