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Eurasia Daily Monitor
July 7, 2008 -- Volume 5, Issue 128
GUAM SUMMIT HELD AMID ADVERSE TRENDS ON ENERGY AND SECESSIONIST
CONFLICTS
by Vladimir Socor
Leaders of the GUAM group of countries -- Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan, and Moldova -- and of GUAM Partner countries (Lithuania, Poland,
Romania, and Czech Republic) held the annual GUAM summit on July 1 in
Batumi, Georgia. Under the motto, `GUAM: Integrating Europe's East,' a
signal that the European Union could not miss, this year's summit registered
adverse trends on the issues of uppermost concern to GUAM countries: the
secessionist conflicts and Caspian energy transit.
In the backdrop to the GUAM summit, Russia accelerated the seizure of
Abkhazia from Georgia by force, the first instance of seemingly successful
Russian territorial revisionism in the post-Soviet era, and potentially
repeatable elsewhere. In his speech at the summit, Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili noted the parallels with the situation in Europe during
the late 1930s.
European Union leaders, however, had failed to raise this issue at the
EU-Russia summit on June 26 and 27, despite multiple appeals by Georgia and
countries friendly to it. In the wake of that EU failure, Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus told the GUAM summit, `Georgia and the whole of
Europe need clear answers about what an alien army does in this or that
country, on whose authority and on what mandate. Russia's so-called
peacekeeping operation is preventing the return of hundreds of thousands of
expellees, while forcing the remaining population to link their future with
the presence of Russian troops' (BNS, July 2). Azerbaijan's President Ilham
Aliyev also expressed strong support for Georgia in that context (Trend,
July 2).
The summit registered `deep concern about the threats caused by the
protracted conflicts and armed separatism' (Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
Karabakh, and Transnistria). It called for resolving those conflicts on the
basis of `territorial integrity and inviolability of the internationally
recognized borders of the states, reintegration of the uncontrolled
territories into the states that they are a part of, return of forcibly
displaced persons, development of civil society, restoration of destroyed
infrastructure on these territories', and mobilization of international
support toward that end (summit communiqués, July 1).
Stagnation of Western-led pipeline and overland transport projects
through the region is the other issue of concern to GUAM countries. The
group is appealing to the EU to revitalize these projects, particularly the
long-planned trans-Caspian transport links, `without which GUAM's transit
potential could not fully develop, and the bridge between Europe and Asia
could not be created,' as the Azerbaijani presidency noted when handing over
the reins to Georgia in Batumi (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan,
`Report on GUAM during the Azerbaijani Presidency,' July 2008).
Some projects are being realized incrementally and on a relatively
small scale, primarily through the efforts of GUAM countries themselves and
short of the strategic scale that Brussels and Washington had envisaged
before dropping the flag of leadership. During the Batumi summit, Presidents
Saakashvili and Aliyev symbolically lit the gas stove in a Batumi apartment,
inaugurating the flow of gas from Azerbaijan to this part of Georgia. Energy
Ministers Natig Aliev of Azerbaijan and Alexandre Khetaguri of Georgia,
Economics Minister Eka Sharashidze of Georgia, and Transport Minister Serik
Ahmetov of Kazakhstan discussed plans to increase oil deliveries along the
direct corridor from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan and Georgian Black Sea ports,
for further shipment to Ukraine and into the projected
Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk route. The energy summit held in Kyiv in May
launched an updated, expanded version of this project.
The Georgian-led GUAM Secretariat and the International Road Union
(IRU) announced the creation of a partnership at this summit. The IRU, an
overarching organization representing trucking, bus, and other forms of the
motor transportation business, has launched a New Eurasian Land Transport
Initiative (NELTI) involving the GUAM countries. GUAM Secretary-General
Valeri Chechelashvili and IRU Secretary-General Martin Marmy presented the
concept to the summit participants. It envisages the formation of a
transport corridor Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia for freight services and
passenger traffic, along the historic Silk Road. Trans-Black Sea and
trans-Caspian ferryboat links for motor vehicles are key elements in this
project (Statement by the GUAM Heads of State, July 1). NELTI might become
one component in the overall Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia transit corridor,
originally promoted as TRACECA by EU authorities in Brussels, but then
relegated to the back burner of EU policy.
Azerbaijan's chairmanship of GUAM (June 2007-June 2008) proved to be
the most efficient and dedicated chairmanship in GUAM's institutional
history. It collected and published for the first time the full record of
GUAM documents and activities, from the organization's inception in 1997 to
date, in several volumes. It hosted three goal-oriented, project-based
international conferences in Baku, and published the proceedings with
full-scale policy recommendations concerning the protracted conflicts,
energy development and transportation (`Basic Principles for the Settlement
of Conflicts on the Territories of GUAM States,' April 2008; `GUAM Transit,'
April 2008; and `GUAM Development Strategy,' May 2008).
These contributions have laid the basis for developing a `GUAM aquis.'
They also form a basis for GUAM's incoming Georgian chairmanship to move
forward.
--Vladimir Socor
July 7, 2008 -- Volume 5, Issue 128
GUAM SUMMIT HELD AMID ADVERSE TRENDS ON ENERGY AND SECESSIONIST
CONFLICTS
by Vladimir Socor
Leaders of the GUAM group of countries -- Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan, and Moldova -- and of GUAM Partner countries (Lithuania, Poland,
Romania, and Czech Republic) held the annual GUAM summit on July 1 in
Batumi, Georgia. Under the motto, `GUAM: Integrating Europe's East,' a
signal that the European Union could not miss, this year's summit registered
adverse trends on the issues of uppermost concern to GUAM countries: the
secessionist conflicts and Caspian energy transit.
In the backdrop to the GUAM summit, Russia accelerated the seizure of
Abkhazia from Georgia by force, the first instance of seemingly successful
Russian territorial revisionism in the post-Soviet era, and potentially
repeatable elsewhere. In his speech at the summit, Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili noted the parallels with the situation in Europe during
the late 1930s.
European Union leaders, however, had failed to raise this issue at the
EU-Russia summit on June 26 and 27, despite multiple appeals by Georgia and
countries friendly to it. In the wake of that EU failure, Lithuanian
President Valdas Adamkus told the GUAM summit, `Georgia and the whole of
Europe need clear answers about what an alien army does in this or that
country, on whose authority and on what mandate. Russia's so-called
peacekeeping operation is preventing the return of hundreds of thousands of
expellees, while forcing the remaining population to link their future with
the presence of Russian troops' (BNS, July 2). Azerbaijan's President Ilham
Aliyev also expressed strong support for Georgia in that context (Trend,
July 2).
The summit registered `deep concern about the threats caused by the
protracted conflicts and armed separatism' (Abkhazia, South Ossetia,
Karabakh, and Transnistria). It called for resolving those conflicts on the
basis of `territorial integrity and inviolability of the internationally
recognized borders of the states, reintegration of the uncontrolled
territories into the states that they are a part of, return of forcibly
displaced persons, development of civil society, restoration of destroyed
infrastructure on these territories', and mobilization of international
support toward that end (summit communiqués, July 1).
Stagnation of Western-led pipeline and overland transport projects
through the region is the other issue of concern to GUAM countries. The
group is appealing to the EU to revitalize these projects, particularly the
long-planned trans-Caspian transport links, `without which GUAM's transit
potential could not fully develop, and the bridge between Europe and Asia
could not be created,' as the Azerbaijani presidency noted when handing over
the reins to Georgia in Batumi (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan,
`Report on GUAM during the Azerbaijani Presidency,' July 2008).
Some projects are being realized incrementally and on a relatively
small scale, primarily through the efforts of GUAM countries themselves and
short of the strategic scale that Brussels and Washington had envisaged
before dropping the flag of leadership. During the Batumi summit, Presidents
Saakashvili and Aliyev symbolically lit the gas stove in a Batumi apartment,
inaugurating the flow of gas from Azerbaijan to this part of Georgia. Energy
Ministers Natig Aliev of Azerbaijan and Alexandre Khetaguri of Georgia,
Economics Minister Eka Sharashidze of Georgia, and Transport Minister Serik
Ahmetov of Kazakhstan discussed plans to increase oil deliveries along the
direct corridor from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan and Georgian Black Sea ports,
for further shipment to Ukraine and into the projected
Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk route. The energy summit held in Kyiv in May
launched an updated, expanded version of this project.
The Georgian-led GUAM Secretariat and the International Road Union
(IRU) announced the creation of a partnership at this summit. The IRU, an
overarching organization representing trucking, bus, and other forms of the
motor transportation business, has launched a New Eurasian Land Transport
Initiative (NELTI) involving the GUAM countries. GUAM Secretary-General
Valeri Chechelashvili and IRU Secretary-General Martin Marmy presented the
concept to the summit participants. It envisages the formation of a
transport corridor Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia for freight services and
passenger traffic, along the historic Silk Road. Trans-Black Sea and
trans-Caspian ferryboat links for motor vehicles are key elements in this
project (Statement by the GUAM Heads of State, July 1). NELTI might become
one component in the overall Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia transit corridor,
originally promoted as TRACECA by EU authorities in Brussels, but then
relegated to the back burner of EU policy.
Azerbaijan's chairmanship of GUAM (June 2007-June 2008) proved to be
the most efficient and dedicated chairmanship in GUAM's institutional
history. It collected and published for the first time the full record of
GUAM documents and activities, from the organization's inception in 1997 to
date, in several volumes. It hosted three goal-oriented, project-based
international conferences in Baku, and published the proceedings with
full-scale policy recommendations concerning the protracted conflicts,
energy development and transportation (`Basic Principles for the Settlement
of Conflicts on the Territories of GUAM States,' April 2008; `GUAM Transit,'
April 2008; and `GUAM Development Strategy,' May 2008).
These contributions have laid the basis for developing a `GUAM aquis.'
They also form a basis for GUAM's incoming Georgian chairmanship to move
forward.
--Vladimir Socor