Ukraine's Yushchenko hosts leaders for regional summit

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Tuesday meets with the leaders of three other ex-Soviet republics to discuss strengthening economic and security cooperation and promoting democracy in the region along Russia's border.

Photo: Ukraine's Yushchenko hosts leaders for regional summit

Ukraine's Yushchenko hosts leaders for regional summit

The summit brings together leaders of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. The four countries formed an alliance in 1997 that has increasingly been seen as an alternative to the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States.

Yushchenko has insisted that the goal is not to squeeze out Moscow's role in the region, but to foster cooperation on a smaller scale between these largely Western-leaning nations.

However, in recent weeks, both Georgia and Ukraine have complained about the ineffectiveness of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili has raised the prospect of quitting that grouping of 12 ex-Soviet nations.

"If we can breath life into the old format, let's try," Saakashvili was quoted as saying by the Unian news agency. "I'd be only happy. But, unfortunately, the CIS is not at its best right now." He added that the free trade and free movement the Commonwealth of Independent States was set up to protect had floundered.

Saakashvili was speaking in the Ukrainian capital on Monday at a festival to promote Georgian wine, which has been barred from Russia in a trade dispute, the latest strain in relations between Tbilisi and Moscow, reports the AP.

I.L.