Half of CIS Leaders Skip Horse Races

President Dmitry Medvedev gathered leaders from some of Russia’s closest allies at the Moscow hippodrome this weekend for a stylish, though informal, CIS summit, but only half of the group’s presidents showed up.

While racehorses, 11 of which belonged to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, circled outside, Medvedev hosted Saturday’s talks in a lavish white tent over food and wine, winning a promise from Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev that a much discussed customs union would start Jan. 1. He also managed to set up direct talks between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Nazarbayev said in televised comments that several other CIS members were interested in joining the customs union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. But it was unclear which countries he meant and what was the status of negotiations with Belarus, whose leadership is locked in a bitter trade dispute with Moscow.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced last month that Russia would abandon its 16-year bid to join the World Trade Organization in favor of a joint application with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The move has been criticized as a ploy to indefinitely postpone Moscow’s WTO accession.

Lengthy talks on Friday and Saturday between Presidents Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan were later labeled as “very constructive” by the Kremlin, but little indication emerged of any major breakthrough over the Nagorno-Karabakh ?­?­dispute, one of the so-called “frozen conflicts” left by the Soviet collapse.

“Statements by officials made after the meeting indicate that no progress on principle issues has been made,” said Panakh Huseinov, a member of the Azeri parliament’s security and defense committee and an opposition member, Reuters reported.

The Armenian government called the talks as “constructive” and said the leaders would meet again in the fall.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azeri borders, declared independence in 1991 with support from Armenia and fought Azerbaijan in a war that killed 35,000 people before a shaky cease-fire was signed in 1994. No country has recognized the enclave’s independence.

Russia exerts strong leverage on both Azerbaijan and Armenia, and analysts say mediation over Nagorno-Karabakh could consolidate its strong role in the South Caucasus.

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Moldovan leader Vladimir Voronin were the only other CIS leaders at the summit. But the presence of the presidents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose separatist republics were recognized as independent by Moscow after last year’s war with Georgia, upped the Kremlin’s official number of heads of state to eight.

No invitation was issued for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whose country’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth of Independent States is to be finalized next month.

Yet five leaders of the currently 12-member CIS declined to come.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov apologized, saying a close relative was sick, national media reported.

Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev explained that he had to prepare for presidential elections in his country on Thursday.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s Viktor Yushchenko said the president went for a traditional ascension and prayers in the Carpathian Mountains.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov did not even bother to explain his absence, Interfax reported.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been sparring with the Kremlin recently, did not consider a horse race an appropriate place for negotiations, said a senior Belarussian diplomat, Oleg Ivanov. “Our president does not plan to attend an event like that,” Ivanov said, Interfax reported.

It later emerged that Lukashenko instead gave his attention to steel horses that day, showing up on a Harley Davidson at a biker festival in Belarus.

Lukashenko snubbed a CIS security summit in Moscow in June, prompting a rebuke from Medvedev, who complained that the Belarussian leader had not even bothered to personally explain his absence.

The no-shows should not be interpreted as a sign of further cracks in the CIS, said Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy director of the Moscow-based CIS Institute, a think tank.

“Everybody could choose to attend or not to attend,” Zharikhin told The Moscow Times. “So some came for the horse race, others for a photo opportunity with Medvedev, and still others decided they didn’t need either.”

Ivanov, the Belarussian diplomat, said Lukashenko planned to attend the next Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in Kyrgyzstan at the end of this month.