Ex-Soviet States at Odds; Group’s Future in Doubt

Leaders of the three-month-old Commonwealth of Independent States failed Friday to resolve most of the key political, economic and military issues it faces, putting its future in serious doubt.

With the rancorous rivalry between Russia and Ukraine, the Commonwealth’s biggest members, dominating the summit meeting, the leaders of the 11 former Soviet republics in the group found they could agree completely on less than half of the nearly 30 items on their agenda.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk complained bitterly as the meeting ended, “We have yet to see a single document adopted by the Commonwealth that has found practical implementation, and this meeting has not become a turning point in this respect.

“If the situation within the Commonwealth does not change, it is doomed,” Kravchuk added.

But Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, who had begun the day smiling and jovial only to end it scowling, told journalists, “There will probably be less optimism after this meeting, but I believe the Commonwealth still has a future.”

As Yeltsin and Kravchuk both acknowledged, it is the growing bitterness between their countries that lies at the heart of the disputes and now threatens the Commonwealth with disintegration.

“For the people of Russia, I have only positive words,” Kravchuk said, boiling with anger as he assessed the results of the summit. “As for its leaders, I have no comment whatsoever--that’s the business of the Russian people themselves.”

Yeltsin, in turn, sarcastically praised Ukraine’s “constructive approach” to the military issues on the agenda after Kravchuk said he would sign none of the proposed agreements because his country will not be part of the Commonwealth’s armed forces.

Of 28 items on the original agenda, 17 agreements were signed--but only six of them by Ukraine.

Although the agreements establish the legal basis for the Commonwealth’s armed forces as well as its command structure, the leaders failed to settle on a formula to finance them.

They did not discuss the makeup of the Commonwealth’s strategic forces, virtually ensuring that Ukraine and Russia will continue to quarrel over the Black Sea Fleet of the old Soviet navy.

While reaffirming Ukraine’s intention to become a non-nuclear state with the destruction of the tactical and strategic nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union, Kravchuk said that until there is joint control of this process and international safeguards he would not transfer any more nuclear warheads to Russia.

The leaders did agree to create a group of military observers to help resolve conflicts in hot spots such as Nagorno-Karabakh in the southern Caucasus and in Moldova’s Dniestr region, but they stopped short of forming a full-fledged peacekeeping force. Implementation of both plans must await parliamentary approval in Azerbaijan and Ukraine, neither of which seems likely to give it.

Among the military issues that were settled were the appointments of three senior generals to command Commonwealth forces and the need for unified control of external borders of all Commonwealth members except those of Ukraine.

A number of the toughest issues, including the division of former state property under the Soviet Union and ways to share the old Soviet State Bank’s assets, were simply struck from the agenda when Yeltsin declared he would not discuss them because they were “too complex.”

“At last we got full clarity,” Kravchuk said of Yeltsin’s refusal to discuss the property issue. “We shall never, just never reach any agreement on the inheritance we received from the defunct Soviet Union, not on its assets, not on its archives, not on anything.”

Blaming Russia and what Ukrainians regard as its neo-imperial ambitions under Yeltsin, Kravchuk told the press conference, “I recall previous meetings when all the other states were complaining about Russia, and I felt sort of uneasy about the nature of that complaint.

“Now I understand it--Russia cannot act other than it does because its own vital interests dictate its policies,” he said. “But Ukraine fully intends to act now in the same fashion.”

Kravchuk had opened the meeting with a blunt warning to the other leaders. In the three months since the Commonwealth was formed, he said, “the economic situation has deteriorated, and the events (since the last meeting five weeks ago) prompt us to express extreme concern over the fate of the Commonwealth and its member states.

“We now have a full-blown war, and blood is being spilled,” Kravchuk said, complaining that the Commonwealth had done nothing about either the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh or armed clashes in eastern Moldova. “Economically, we are no longer on the edge of the abyss--we are actually sliding down into it.

“People place great faith in us, but we have not been able to resolve a single issue, military, economic or other, within the Commonwealth framework,” Kravchuk continued. “An opinion is emerging that the Commonwealth has become a screen behind which each member state looks after its own needs and problems quite separately from the common needs and interests.”

Anatoly Zlenko, Ukraine’s foreign minister, commented at the end of the daylong meeting, “We lost a lot of time on many secondary issues. We can’t continue to work in the same way; if we do, we will have only a small chance for the Commonwealth.”

Challenged to assess the Commonwealth’s future, Kravchuk told the press conference, “I presume the definition commonwealth was used at the outset as an expression for a dream.”

Yeltsin replied, “Commonwealth is a dynamic process, and it will eventually lead to the dream becoming reality.”

Kravchuk, in fact, is under mounting pressure to pull out of the Commonwealth, which many Ukrainians see as controlled by Russia and a continuation of Russian domination.

Dmitro Pavlichko, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and a strong opponent of the his country’s participation in the Commonwealth, said nothing useful had come from the day of talks--but he was pleased.

“I am satisfied because now everyone in Ukraine will see that the Commonwealth is leading us nowhere,” Pavlichko said.

About 1,000 Ukrainian nationalists had demonstrated outside the building, once Kiev’s Communist Party headquarters, where the summit was held, chanting “Yeltsin go home!” and “No to the Commonwealth!”

“Cooperation Yes, Moscow No!” a banner held by a member of the Ukrainian Rukh independence movement said; another declared, “Ukraine Without Moscow!”

Yeltsin, facing the prospect that his own Russian Federation might break up as the Soviet Union did and the Commonwealth now threatens to do, took to the national airwaves Friday night with an appeal to the people of Tatarstan to vote “no” in a key referendum scheduled for today.

Tatarstan, a region of 3.7 million people on the Volga River, is technically only voting on whether it is a sovereign state entitled to equal relations with other states--including Russia. But Yeltsin warned that the separatist Tatarstan government actually plans to use the plebiscite as the basis for full secession from Russia.

“Otherwise, the referendum just doesn’t make any sense,” Yeltsin said gravely in an eight-minute television and radio address.

The rebellious region of Chechen-Ingushetia is also fighting to secede from Russia.

Grebenshikov, a reporter in The Times’ Moscow Bureau, reported from Kiev, and Times staff writer Parks reported from Moscow. Staff writer Carey Goldberg also reported for this story from Moscow, and special correspondent Alex Shprintsen contributed from Kiev.