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  • Monomakh Beat CIS Colleagues

    MONOMAKH BEAT CIS COLLEAGUES
    by Natalia Antipova

    WPS Agency
    DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
    July 22, 2009 Wednesday
    Russia

    INFORMAL CIS SUMMIT: NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT; CIS presidents met at
    the hippodrome to discuss political issues.

    The Presidential Cup Races in Moscow last Saturday were anything
    but mundane.

    Presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,
    Moldova, and leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia arrived for
    the races.

    President Dmitry Medvedev met with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan
    Nazarbayev even before the races. International issues were discussed
    and specifically the Customs Union which Nazarbayev regarded as
    "number one issue" on the bilateral agenda. "I'm convinced that the
    Customs Union will be fully functional on January 1. A serious step
    closer to integration as it is, other CIS countries display interest
    in the Customs Union," Nazarbayev said.

    When the races were on, Medvedev had a tete-a-tete talk with his
    Tajik opposite number Emomali Rakhmon.

    The principal meeting took place a bit later. Without waiting
    for the races to be over, Medvedev with Azerbaijani and Armenian
    leaders retreated to seclusion of a Moscow restaurant. That Dmitry
    Medvedev, Ilham Aliyev, and Serj Sargsjan needed privacy to discuss
    Nagorno-Karabakh needn't be said. "A lengthy and, we believe,
    constructive meeting took place. Certain issues still unresolved were
    discussed," Presidential Aide Sergei Prikhodko would later say.

    As a matter of fact, Sargsjan and Aliyev had met in Moscow without
    Medvedev before the meeting in a restaurant. Russian chairman of the
    OSCE Minsk Group called the meeting "specific and serious". The three
    presidents will be meeting again, this autumn.

    As for Rakhmon, Medvedev will meet with him before that - during the
    visit to Tajikistan in the near future. "I consider it an element of
    preparations for the working visit," Medvedev said.

    Never a man to be told twice, Rakhmon promised elevation of the
    bilateral relations to "a particularly fine level."

    CIS leaders in the meantime will also meet at the summits of the
    CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization in Kyrgyzstan and the
    Commonwealth itself in Moldova later this year. Whether or not
    President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko decides to attend them
    remains to be seen. The races in Moscow he chose to ignore.
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