MOSCOW – Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has said he wants to bring former Soviet states into a “Eurasian union” in an article that outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country’s next president.
Mr Putin said the new union would build on an existing customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labour movement between the three countries.
"We are not going to stop there and are setting an ambitious goal – to achieve an even higher integration level in the Eurasian union," Mr Putin wrote in an article which is to be published in the Izvestianewspaper.
Mr Putin said last month he would run in the March 2012 presidential election and his approval ratings show he is set to win.
His initiative comes as Russia nears the end of its 18-year-old negotiations to join the World Trade Organisation. In the article Mr Putin made no secret of his scepticism about the global trade watchdog.
“The process of finding new post-crisis global development models is moving forward with difficulty. For example, the Doha round has practically stopped. There are objective difficulties inside the WTO,” he wrote.
In 2009, Mr Putin threw Russia’s bid to join the WTO into disarray, saying Russia would instead form the customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The initiative will have to be explained to organisation members.
Mr Putin, who once called the collapse of the USSR in 1991 “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, wrote that his new project would not resemble the Soviet Union: “It would be naive to attempt to restore or copy something from the past. However, a stronger integration on a new political and economic basis and a new system of values is an imperative of our era.”
Russia’s relationship with its ex-Soviet neighbours has been troubled by trade and political disputes and armed conflicts such as the 2008 war with Georgia.
Mr Putin said he saw the new union as a supra-national body that would co-ordinate “economic and currency policy” between its members. It would also be open to new members. He said the customs union would expand to take in central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
He made a veiled criticism of Ukraine which chose to stay outside the union, citing its commitment to European integration. Some of Russia’s neighbours were unwilling to commit to integration because this appeared to contradict their decision to build ties with Europe. But this was a wrong choice, he wrote.
The customs union and in future the Eurasian union would be the European Union’s partner in talks over the creation of a common economic space, guaranteeing its members a stronger voice.
“Membership in the Eurasian Union, apart from direct economic benefits, will enable its members to integrate into Europe faster and from a much stronger position.”
Mr Putin saw the way out of the global crisis through a regional integration, mentioning the EU, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation, the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as examples. – (Reuters)