(MOSCOW NEWS, No.43, Ocotber 28 - November 3, 1994)

President Boris Yeltsin called two of the documents signed at the recent CIS summit to be mosct important - the agreements on a payments union and on the Inter-State Economic Committee (ISEC). Yeltsin, chair of the meeting, was speaking at a press conference. However, will the signing of these documents bring much benefit in real terms?

The epithet "historical" was not pronounced at the summit, although it was in the air: the disputes around these questions had continued for two whole years since the disintegration of the single monetary system. And still, to all appearances, the last full stop has not been written in the disputes by the signing of the agreements. Unanimity was demonstrated solely on account of the agreement of a payments union, which is badly needed by the republics with less stable national currencies than the Russian ruble.

Their hopes are pinned on the fact that the agreement makes provision for the mutual conversion of national currencies and will considerably enliven state-to-state trade and economic relations. Economists believe this will have a beneficial effect on the state of the CIS members' economies.

No such unanimity was evoked by the economic committee: Turkmenistan did not sign the agreement; Azerbaijan signed it, having diplomatically reserved a "loophole" for itself in the shape of a special opinion on the need to correlate ISEC's principles with national legislation. Other states may also have recourse to this ploy when directly confronted with the question of what functions they are prepared to delegate to this first supranational body in the Commonwealth. As the debates which preceded the latest meeting have shown, every state is ready to be guided by the rules only while this is in its interests, and ceases to recognize them if they are to its detriment. In the ISEC the dominant position is held solely by Russia, which possessed 50 percent of the votes: Ukraine has 14 percent, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have 5 percent each, and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Georgia each have 3 percent.

Debates around the distribution of votes arose as early as a month ago when the provision on the economic committee was discussed by the heads of the government: special concern was aroused by the paragraph of the provision under which 80 percent of the votes was needed to stave off any proposal.

This time as well, as during the previous meetings, the heads of state met first in narrow circle in the Kremlin behind closed doors. Moreover, this discussion lasted longer than the second, paradelike part of the meeting.

What did the presidents speak about in the Kremlin? They veil of secrecy this time was lifted slightly by Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev at a press conference he gave on the day after the summit. As the president said, he elected not to wait until all items on the agenda had been discussed, but was the first to take the floor and directly turn to the Presidents with a request to speakout concretely on his idea of a Eurasian Union.

According to Nazarbayev, he was surprised by Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko: An opponent of the Belovzhskaya Pushcha agreements on the desintegration of the USSR. This time Lukashenko appeared as an opponent of close integration, though he later disavowed his appraisal, saying that he had been misunderstood. The idea of a Eurasian Union was unambigiously supported solely by presidents Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan and Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan. Some of the presidents "acknowledged" the idea, whereas Yeltsin said that it was already being translated into reality in many respects, but in its general shape it was still premature. Nazarbayev himself maintains that in the long term the idea of a Eurasian Union will triumph all the same because there is no alternative to it. "Both Payments union and the supranational economic committee were proposed by us in the system of the Eurasian Union, and now they have acquired life," the president of Kazakhstan stressed.

Not everything which presidents speak about among themselves behind closed doors becomes known to the public at large. Among such topics, evidently, was also the concept of collective security which had to be signed at the last meeting. Answering a question about the concept's destiny, President Yeltsin said curtly: "We have come to terms." It became clear that the corresponding issue was taken off the agenda on Russia's initiative. The explanations of high-ranking officials about the need to "work up, to settle and to agree" do not seem to by quite sincere, if only because allthis work had been completted two months earlier, by July 20. The ministers of defense and foreign affairs of the nine states which are parties to the Treaty on Collective Security even affixed their signatures.

The explanation of the latest delay must evidently be sought in the concept as such. It gives a new interpretation to the Treaty on Collective Security signed in May, 1992 in Tashkent. Specifically, provision is made in the long term for the creation of the Commonwealth's unified armed forces, as well as the formation of the CIS collective peacekeeping forces. The latest paragraph is objectively at odds with the interests of Azerbaijan, which resists in every way the introduction of the CIS peacekeeping forces into Nagorny Karabakh and demands greater participation by international forces. Considering that the West, notably the United States, has been showing increasing interest in Azerbaijan and in the settling of the Karabakh conflict, it is impossible to rule out the explanation of the Russian military. They say the concept's quick removal from the agenda was caused by the West's pressure on Russia. If this is correct, then in future a "softened" variant of the concept will probably be presented for the

president's approval.

Thus, the Mosocw meeting of the presidents has made a stride towards a common market of the Commonwealth nations while leaving open the question - will these agreements work?