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OUR UKRAINE LEADER WANTS TROOP PULLOUT FROM IRAQ. Presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who is leader of the opposition Our Ukraine bloc, has vowed to withdraw the Ukrainian military contingent from Iraq if he wins the country's presidential election in October-November, UNIAN reported on 10 August. "The regime of [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych and [President Leonid] Kuchma [considers the presence of the Ukrainian troops in Iraq] an excuse for antidemocratic actions in Ukraine," Yushchenko told a group of voters in Crimea. "We don't want to restore democracy in Iraq through a suppression of democracy in Ukraine.... The current rotation of the contingent should be the last." JM
UKRAINIAN COMMUNIST LEADER COURTS SOCIALIST IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. Presidential candidate Petro Symonenko, who is leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU), has said that if he wins this fall's presidential election, he is ready to offer the post of prime minister to another leftist presidential candidate, Socialist Party head Oleksandr Moroz, Interfax reported on 10 August. Touching on the possibility of unifying the political left in Ukraine, Symonenko said, "The epochal unification of the leftists as a powerful political alternative to the dictatorship of criminal oligarchy is possible only on the basis of the KPU." Moroz participated in the 1994 and 1995 presidential elections, in which he won 13.3 percent and 11.3 percent of the vote, respectively. Symonenko participated in the 1999 election, obtaining 36.5 percent of the vote in the first round and 37.8 percent in the runoff. JM
The leaders of 11 countries bordering or neighboring the Black Sea region gathered in Istanbul in June 1992 to found the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) organization. If one is to believe Turkish sources, it was late Turkish President Turgut Ozal who initiated the process of uniting such widely disparate states as Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine in one organization. The ambitious project covered a vast area reaching from the Adriatic Sea in the west to Vladivostok in the east, and from the Greek and Turkish shores of the Mediterranean to Russia's Baltic Sea and Barents Sea coasts -- in other words, an area of roughly 20 million square kilometers, according to the BSEC's official website (http://www.bsec.gov.tr). The 11 countries provided "an unsaturated market of 330 million people with supply well behind demand in the three principal economic sectors of agriculture, industry, services" and "a foreign-trade capacity of over $300 billion annually," according to the website.
Moreover, the BSEC united countries that account for the world's second-largest reserves of oil and gas, huge resources of minerals and metals, and enormous human resources, both highly trained and unskilled. However, it was also hampered by a "broad manufacturing basis in need of restructuring, overhauling, modernization, and commercialization."
On paper, this new organization could have developed into a major economic and -- to a much lesser extent -- political player. However, the BSEC's impact was weakened from its outset by two major factors: open rivalries and even hostilities among some of its members, and its organizational structure.
On closer inspection, it becomes clear that these two factors are intertwined. Although the BSEC was founded as an organization focusing on economic cooperation, its founding members emphasized the need for peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts, as stated in the 1992 Bosporus Declaration, because "the region is already faced by serious conflicts and...there is the danger of new tensions arising."
At the time of its foundation, some BSEC members were actively engaged in armed conflicts, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh; Turkey and Greece stood at the brink of war on several occasions in the Aegean Sea; and Russia was involved in conflicts in Georgia and Moldova. Therefore, it was certainly a great achievement to unite them under a common roof. Even more so if one keeps in mind that the two biggest countries in the BSEC -- Russia and Turkey -- were struggling for political and economic influence throughout the region. Stressing the economic aspect of regional cooperation was therefore a way to avoid addressing the existing conflicts and rivalries.
Despite efforts to strengthen the BSEC by turning it into an international legal body in 1998 and by founding institutions such as the Thessaloniki-based Black Sea Development Bank, hopes that the BSEC would evolve into a politically integrated entity similar to the EU appear to have been utopian. Even on an economic level, cooperation did not develop as was expected. This was (and is) first and foremost because "the members have refrained from committing themselves to specific and detailed obligations in order to bring about an ever-deepening economic integration involving a multiplicity of actors, besides governments, of the type established by the EU," as Berdal Aral of the international-relations department at Istanbul's Fatih University pointed out in an analysis for "Alternatives: the Turkish Journal of International Relations" (see http://www.alternativesjournal.net/volume1/number4/aral.htm).
"Instead, [the BSEC members] have acted in an unusually cautious fashion to sketch out general commitments, while opting for framework agreements marked by a hesitant language that offers ample leeway for avoiding strict obligations," Aral continued. "Similarly, the infrastructure projects [such as gas and oil pipelines] are scheduled to be planned and implemented only at the intergovernmental level. The parties have even shied away from establishing partnership on the basis of a treaty or convention, and instead opting for nonbinding declarations."
Another reason the BSEC has acquired little influence is that some of its members were either already EU members (in the case of Greece) or anticipated EU membership in the near future (Bulgaria, Romania, and possibly Turkey). In some member countries that previously belonged to the Soviet bloc, the fear that the BSEC might turn out to be an updated version of COMECON might also have served as a deterrent. After all, apart from Albania, Turkey, and, more recently, Serbia and Montenegro (which joined the BSEC in 2004), all BSEC countries were part of the former Soviet-dominated COMECON.
Some observers have noted that the inclusion of countries such as Albania that do not have direct access to the Black Sea region has undermined the chance to build greater economic cohesion among the BSEC members. And, given their persistent rivalry, BSEC members Russia and Turkey are unlikely to play a coordinated role similar to the French-German axis within the EU. "Unless both of them come to see the Black Sea as the realm of common economic interests, Russian-Turkish rivalry will no doubt prejudice the opportunities offered by the BSEC," Aral wrote.
Will the members of the BSEC be able to overcome their disputes and embark on a long-term process of reforming (and strengthening) the organization? Only then would the BSEC gain importance and its summits become more than a platform for fine phrases and meetings on the sidelines.
As things stand, it is unlikely that the BSEC will ever develop into a political organization similar to the EU, mainly because some of its members do not want this to happen -- at least at present. In an interview with the independent Armenian daily "Azg" on 7 July, Armenian BSEC representative Arsen Avagian said, "Armenia makes efforts not to let the BSEC turn into a political organization, and the member states well understand this." As an example of how BSEC member states seek to avoid addressing contentious issues, Avagian recalled that during recent discussions leading to the adoption of a declaration on Black Sea regional security, other member states, including Turkey, voted down a proposal by Azerbaijan to insert into that declaration a phrase condemning "aggressive separatism" -- a clear allusion to the Karabakh conflict.
THOUSANDS PETITION PUTIN OVER SOCIAL WELFARE REFORM. Some 80,000 signatures on a petition to President Putin asking him not to sign into law the welfare-reform bill recently passed by the State Duma and the Federation Council have been collected and forwarded to the president, Ekho Moskvy and lenta.ru reported on 9 August (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 9 August 2004). The new law will convert most in-kind social benefits into cash payments. Lev Ponomarev of For Human Rights told Ekho Moskvy that the signatures were collected over a period of 10 days in a variety of Russian regions, including Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Tyumen Oblast. The bill was passed by the Federation Council on 8 August and, if Putin signs it into law, will come into force in 2005. Groups involved in collecting the signatures were organized into an umbrella structure called the Council for Public Solidarity, which included the Council of Veterans, the Collective Action Institute, Memorial, the All-Russia Society of Invalids, trade unions, and Chornobyl clean-up workers. All-Russia Center For the Study Of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) analyst Yelena Pakhomova told Ekho Moskvy that a survey conducted on 17-18 July found that 53 percent of respondents said they think the benefits change will affect them negatively. JAC
The leaders of 11 countries bordering or neighboring the Black Sea region gathered in Istanbul in June 1992 to found the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) organization. If one is to believe Turkish sources, it was late Turkish President Turgut Ozal who initiated the process of uniting such widely disparate states as Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine in one organization. The ambitious project covered a vast area reaching from the Adriatic Sea in the west to Vladivostok in the east, and from the Greek and Turkish shores of the Mediterranean to Russia's Baltic Sea and Barents Sea coasts -- in other words, an area of roughly 20 million square kilometers, according to the BSEC's official website (http://www.bsec.gov.tr). The 11 countries provided "an unsaturated market of 330 million people with supply well behind demand in the three principal economic sectors of agriculture, industry, services" and "a foreign-trade capacity of over $300 billion annually," according to the website.
Moreover, the BSEC united countries that account for the world's second-largest reserves of oil and gas, huge resources of minerals and metals, and enormous human resources, both highly trained and unskilled. However, it was also hampered by a "broad manufacturing basis in need of restructuring, overhauling, modernization, and commercialization."
On paper, this new organization could have developed into a major economic and -- to a much lesser extent -- political player. However, the BSEC's impact was weakened from its outset by two major factors: open rivalries and even hostilities among some of its members, and its organizational structure.
On closer inspection, it becomes clear that these two factors are intertwined. Although the BSEC was founded as an organization focusing on economic cooperation, its founding members emphasized the need for peaceful settlement of disputes and conflicts, as stated in the 1992 Bosporus Declaration, because "the region is already faced by serious conflicts and...there is the danger of new tensions arising."
At the time of its foundation, some BSEC members were actively engaged in armed conflicts, such as Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh; Turkey and Greece stood at the brink of war on several occasions in the Aegean Sea; and Russia was involved in conflicts in Georgia and Moldova. Therefore, it was certainly a great achievement to unite them under a common roof. Even more so if one keeps in mind that the two biggest countries in the BSEC -- Russia and Turkey -- were struggling for political and economic influence throughout the region. Stressing the economic aspect of regional cooperation was therefore a way to avoid addressing the existing conflicts and rivalries.
Despite efforts to strengthen the BSEC by turning it into an international legal body in 1998 and by founding institutions such as the Thessaloniki-based Black Sea Development Bank, hopes that the BSEC would evolve into a politically integrated entity similar to the EU appear to have been utopian. Even on an economic level, cooperation did not develop as was expected. This was (and is) first and foremost because "the members have refrained from committing themselves to specific and detailed obligations in order to bring about an ever-deepening economic integration involving a multiplicity of actors, besides governments, of the type established by the EU," as Berdal Aral of the international-relations department at Istanbul's Fatih University pointed out in an analysis for "Alternatives: the Turkish Journal of International Relations" (see http://www.alternativesjournal.net/volume1/number4/aral.htm).
"Instead, [the BSEC members] have acted in an unusually cautious fashion to sketch out general commitments, while opting for framework agreements marked by a hesitant language that offers ample leeway for avoiding strict obligations," Aral continued. "Similarly, the infrastructure projects [such as gas and oil pipelines] are scheduled to be planned and implemented only at the intergovernmental level. The parties have even shied away from establishing partnership on the basis of a treaty or convention, and instead opting for nonbinding declarations."
Another reason the BSEC has acquired little influence is that some of its members were either already EU members (in the case of Greece) or anticipated EU membership in the near future (Bulgaria, Romania, and possibly Turkey). In some member countries that previously belonged to the Soviet bloc, the fear that the BSEC might turn out to be an updated version of COMECON might also have served as a deterrent. After all, apart from Albania, Turkey, and, more recently, Serbia and Montenegro (which joined the BSEC in 2004), all BSEC countries were part of the former Soviet-dominated COMECON.
Some observers have noted that the inclusion of countries such as Albania that do not have direct access to the Black Sea region has undermined the chance to build greater economic cohesion among the BSEC members. And, given their persistent rivalry, BSEC members Russia and Turkey are unlikely to play a coordinated role similar to the French-German axis within the EU. "Unless both of them come to see the Black Sea as the realm of common economic interests, Russian-Turkish rivalry will no doubt prejudice the opportunities offered by the BSEC," Aral wrote.
Will the members of the BSEC be able to overcome their disputes and embark on a long-term process of reforming (and strengthening) the organization? Only then would the BSEC gain importance and its summits become more than a platform for fine phrases and meetings on the sidelines.
As things stand, it is unlikely that the BSEC will ever develop into a political organization similar to the EU, mainly because some of its members do not want this to happen -- at least at present. In an interview with the independent Armenian daily "Azg" on 7 July, Armenian BSEC representative Arsen Avagian said, "Armenia makes efforts not to let the BSEC turn into a political organization, and the member states well understand this." As an example of how BSEC member states seek to avoid addressing contentious issues, Avagian recalled that during recent discussions leading to the adoption of a declaration on Black Sea regional security, other member states, including Turkey, voted down a proposal by Azerbaijan to insert into that declaration a phrase condemning "aggressive separatism" -- a clear allusion to the Karabakh conflict.