Posted by hanya on March 14, 2000 at 09:02:56:
It appears that nothing is happening with the CIS. According to a 1999/2000 summary of organizations which I obtained the other day at the UN, thus far the CIS has an agreement on a treaty *proposal* on military union, and a United Trade Zone (customs union) that was signed by only Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In case anyone doesn't know, the CIS includes each of the former republics of the Soviet Union except for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
Other than the above, there have been a number of committees set up within the framework of the CIS, such as environment and natural resources, Intergovernmental Council for Oil and Gas (we all know how well this committee has worked to benefit Ukraine ...duh ... oh yeah - Russia keeps raising energy prices, and Ukraine keeps paying them), anti-monopoly council, ecological council, Inter-state Rail Committee, radionavigation, and the like.
In other words, the CIS doesn't begin to approach an organization on the scale of the EU, and if Ukraine should manage to get its foot in the door in the the EU, the CIS agreement becomes even more marginalized.
However, I can't see Ukraine choosing to exit the CIS without having the garantee of a presence in the European Union. It must choose to ally itself either with its neighbors in the East or its neighbors in the West, and if the EU rejects Ukraine, there is no other choice than to form strong bonds with the fSU countries once again. I suspect that Ukraine is just biding its time to see how well it is received in the West.