By Richard Weitz (10/31/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

On October 16, Tehran hosted the second presidential summit of Caspian Sea nations. Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kazakhstan’s Nursulan Nazarbayev, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Turkmenistan’s Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov adopted a joint declaration affirming their solidarity on important regional security issues. Yet, the presidents failed to resolve such important questions as the legal status of trans-Caspian energy pipelines and how to delineate the littoral states’ competing territorial claims.

By Jaba Devdariani (10/17/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

The Return of Georgia’s former hawkish Defense Minister, Irakli Okruashvili, to Georgian politics was scandalous, but short-lived. After leveling an array of heavy accusations against President Mikheil Saakashvili on September 25, Okruashvili was arrested on September 27 on charges of extortion, money laundering and negligence. Surprisingly, he pleaded guilty on October 9 and publicly recanted his allegations against the president.

By Marcin Kaczmarski (10/17/2007 issue of the CACI Analyst)

In the shadow of the triple summit in Dushanbe (CIS, CSTO, EURASEC), the representatives of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and Shanghai Cooperation Organization signed a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the foundations for cooperation between the two organizations. The agreement, for which Russia has pressed Beijing for a long time, can be interpreted as Moscow’s attempt to engage China into a fully-fledged military alliance. Nonetheless, more evidence shows that Moscow aims at limiting Chinese freedom of maneuver in Central Asia and demonstrating Russia’s preeminence in the region, especially in the field of security.