OF CIS Deputy Foreign Minister Grigorii Karasin wrote in \"Rossiiskaya gazeta\" on 16 August that \"Russia cannot agree to the forcible democratization of post-Soviet space\" and considers \"color revolutions\" as falling within that category of democratization. He added that Russia believes \"forcible democratization\" will lead to destabilization and the growth of extremism in the region. He also said Russia has vital interests in the CIS and will persistently defend them. At the same time, Russia understands that other countries have their own interests in the CIS region and can protect these interests \"in a fair competition of ideas and concepts, not power,\" Karasin concluded. Karasin was presumably responding to the recent initiative, unveiled by the Georgian and Ukrainian presidents, to create a \"commonwealth of democracies of the Baltic, Black Sea and Caspian regions.\" (RFE/RL)