Georgia to quit CIS August 18, 2009

PanARMENIAN.Net - Georgia will formally quit the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on August 18, 2009, said Nauryz Aydarov, deputy chairman of the CIS executive committee.



"The committee has already launched the essential procedure," he said.



Georgia notified (on August 18, 2008) the CIS executive organs of the unanimous decision of its parliament to leave the regional organization, and according to the CIS Charter (sec. 1, art. 9) this decision will come into force 12 months after the notification date.



The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics. The organization was founded on December 8, 1991 by Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, when the leaders of the three countries signed an agreement on the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the creation of CIS as a successor entity to the USSR. On December 21, 1991, the leaders of eight additional former Soviet Republics - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan - joined the Creation Agreement, thus bringing the number of participating countries to 11. Georgia joined two years later, in December 1993.