MOSCOW, August 29 (RIA Novosti) - The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Common Economic Space (CES) have not yet come through a protracted crisis, a leading political scientist said Monday.
Commenting on the outcome of the CIS and CES summits in Kazan, Director of the Institute for Political Studies Sergei Markov said the reason of the crisis was that the CIS had not managed to "find its mission" in the last few years.
"The CIS is an informal club of presidents, and low-level integration, which means cooperation in communications, aviation, as well as a single criminal database and mutual recognizance of diplomas," Markov said.
Touching upon the reformation of CIS bodies, the expert said those ones that did not work properly had to be abolished. "This is not a search for new ideas, but spring cleaning," he said.
"Of course, some mechanisms will improve after the reform, but there is no answer to the main question - there is no clear-cut mission," the expert said.
He also said the CES, which covers Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, would not be implemented in its original form. "I think the creation of a common economic space for three countries (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan), or in the "3+1" format to share a free economic zone with Ukraine could be a good solution," Markov said.
The political scientist concluded that the CIS was not becoming obsolete, but problems did remain.
