DID AKAEV RUN AWAY
TO THE AMERICANS

The Parliament of Kyrgyzstan took a decision yesterday about imposing a curfew in the country, the "Mayak" broadcasting station announces. Disorders still continues in Bishkek and other cities of the country. There is discrepant information about the place of Akaev. According to one of the versions the latter is in the American base placed in Kyrgyzstan.

THE CIC IS A CLUB

The RF President Vladimir Putin called not to compare the CIC with EU in the interview in Yerevan yesterday. "The reasons of all serious desperation are great expectations,"- the RF President said and reminded that the CIC had been formed to extenuate the destruction of the USSR and to make it more civil. "The CIC solved that problem,"- said Putin adding that at the same time the CIC " is a very convenient club, which allows the leaders of the member countries to discuss and solve issues that stirs people."
It is a sober and realistic appraisal: the historical role of the CIC was enormous indeed: it has provided the civil "divorce" of former soviet republics. But nowadays there is no reason to expect from the CIC general economical achievements, collaboration in political, military and other spheres. We must say that Putin's /as well as ours/ views have been evolved in this case. "The Collaboration of independent countries was formed as a way of integration necessary and unavoidable for everybody in the post soviet territory,"-Vladimir Putin declared during one of the CIC summits. It was mentioned in his annual report to the Federal Assembly in 2003: "Consolidation of the relations with the CIC countries remains as the first priority of foreign policy… I'll say directly; we consider the CIC territory as a sphere of our strategic interests."
But the RF President's appraisals given in the Security Council of Russia in July of 2004 were closer to the argumentation pronounced yesterday. Put said at that time: " We have approached to certain limit of the CIC development and we are now in the dilemma. Either we'll reach to the CIC qualitative strengthening and will create an influential territorial structure on its basis or the destruction of this geopolitical territory unavoidably waits for us. The lack of Russian political activities in the CIC or its groundless conclusion will lead to that more active states will fill that vacuum in that political territory."
The events, which followed that declaration showed that the RF President's quoted analyses and predictions, are done by true direction. The CIC is a club and isn't a territory of joint strategic and economical territory. There is nothing awful in it; bilateral relations can be developed without the CIC. And the center of integration has become Europe where Armenia must probably to strive for. It might be as well to strive together with Russia.