Russia’s Putin offers to form Eurasian Union
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON
Russian PM Vladimir Putin has proposed the formation of a ‘Eurasian Union’ of ex-Soviet nations in a bid to create an alternative grouping to the WTO
Vladimir Putin. AP photo
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for the unification of post-Soviet states into a “Eurasian Union” in an article published Tuesday that also noted his plans to run in Russia’s upcoming presidential election.
The plan raises questions as to Russia’s future within the World Trade Organization, which has been a permanent issue on the foreign policy agenda of President Dmitry Medvedev.
Putin’s article in daily Izvestia outlining a grand project to bring post-Soviet states into closer cooperation comes five months before polls that could return him to the country’s presidency for at least six years. The front-page piece, titled “New Eurasian integration project: a future that begins today,” said the new union would build on an existing customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which, from next year, will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries. The customs union would later expand to take in the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Putin added. The article also leveled veiled criticism at Ukraine, which chose to stay outside the union, citing its commitment to European integration.
Some of Russian’s neighbors were unwilling to commit to integration because this appeared to contradict their decision to build ties with Europe, but this was a wrong choice, the article said.
Putin said the customs union and the future Eurasian Union would be the European Union’s partner in talks over the creation of a common economic space, thus guaranteeing the former’s members a stronger voice.
“We set a more ambitious goal to go to the next, higher level of integration – the Eurasian Union, [which would] build on the experience of the European Union and other regional coalitions,” Putin’s article said. Putin also said fostering regional integration was the only way to end the global crisis, citing the EU, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as examples.
18-years-old negotiations
“The idea is not to recreate the Soviet Union in some form,” Putin said, adding that his new project would not resemble the USSR. Putin has previously been quoted as saying the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”
Putin’s initiative comes as Russia nears the end of its 18-year-old negotiations to join the World Trade Organization. In the article Putin made no secret of his skepticism about the global trade watchdog.
“The process of finding new post-crisis global development models is moving forward with difficulty. For example, the Doha round [of international trade talks] has practically stopped. There are objective difficulties inside the WTO,” he said.
Russia is the biggest economy still outside the trade organization and has pursued membership for many years. Putin did not elaborate in his article how the Eurasian Union would help its accession.
Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said during a meeting with a senior Russian official close to Putin that Washington supported Moscow’s bid to join the WTO. The statement comes as Russia and Georgia hold a fresh round of internationally-mediated talks aimed at preventing another flare-up of violence following their brief war in August 2008.
The latest round of discussions came after a tense session in June, when participants determined that there were risks of a dangerous escalation on the ground. Georgia, a WTO member since 2000, has said it could veto Russia’s entry into the world body over the status of the two Russia-backed breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Tbilisi is demanding the right to monitor border crossings in the two regions, recognized as independent states by Moscow after the Georgia-Russia war in August 2008 but regarded by Georgia as integral parts of its sovereign territory
