CIS AFFAIRS….

Boris Yeltsin’s imperious dismissal of CIS executive secretary Boris Berezovsky two weeks ago continues to reverberate in the member states. Not that anyone (except perhaps Georgia’s President Eduard Shevardnadze) had much affection for Berezovsky, a suddenly rich businessman with political pretensions and a talent for self-aggrandizement. But member-state leaders were indignant at being denied a speaking part in deciding the fate of their own hired hand. Several–Shevardnadze, Azerbaijan’s President Haidar Aliev and Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, were outspoken in opposition. Those three countries have also declared an intention to pull out of the CIS Collective Security Treaty when it expires next month. Kyrgyzstan suspended its payments to the CIS budget. Even in pro-Russian Belarus, President Alyaksandr Lukashenka said the action was “difficult to understand”…. In Moscow, Patriarch Aleksy II said he will pray for “stronger integration among CIS” members. Maybe that will help.