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President Putin said international terrorism would remain the focus of attention of CIS heads of state until the problem was fully solved. The Commonwealth’s countries, he said, had faced terrorism ahead of the Western countries and so were able to anticipate its moves. The President cited the establishment of a CIS Counter-Terrorism Centre and a rapid deployment force as an example of successful cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan stressed that his country’s position on the struggle against terrorism fully coincided with that of Russia.

In President Putin’s view, the CIS already had well-oiled mechanisms for resolving conflicts between Commonwealth countries. One such occasion, he said, was provided by a Tajik-to-Tajik conflict. Mr Putin emphasised that credit for resolving it must go to all the CIS heads of state.

In turn, President Robert Kocharian of Armenia noted that every conflict had its background and specifics, and each one needed an individual, professional approach to be solved.

President Heidar Aliyev of Azerbaijan recalled that as early as 1993 Azerbaijan proposed holding a meeting between CIS leaders dedicated to ways of resolving inter-ethnic conflicts. In his opinion, it was still a topical issue.

In turn, President Putin stressed that whereas earlier conflicts inside the Soviet Union were between ethnicities, now they transformed themselves into those between countries and became more difficult to address.

During the news conference, President Putin also commented on the latest events in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict area. He referred to incidents in the Pankisi and Kodor gorges, where, as Georgia alleged in official statements, Russian air force planes delivered strikes against rural villages on the night of November 27–28. Earlier, Russia had categorically denied these allegations, insisting that no aircraft had been airborne in the area of the Russian-Georgian border at the time.

The Russian head of state called into doubt the claims that the Russian Air Force was involved. He said either no strikes were dealt or they were not targeted at villages. He quoted the Russian secret services as saying those were clashes between militants.

President Putin supported a proposal by President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia that a bilateral commission be set up to investigate the incident, but at the same time voiced doubts that Russian investigative experts could reach the area, which, he said, was not easily accessible even to Georgia’s officials. The President said that not only were there militants, their bases and ammunition depots in the area, but also drug manufacturing facilities. He said militants in Chechnya used repeater towers in the region to contact their sponsors in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. These were not unsupported claims, he said, but established facts.

In turn, Mr Shevardnadze expressed confidence that Russia’s leadership did not know about the bombings. He assumed it could have been individual commanders, whether acting deliberately or in error. The Georgian President saw no reason to bomb villages.

The Georgian leader said that at the current meeting of the Commonwealth heads of state he had not raised the bombardment issue, deciding to discuss it at a separate meeting with his Russian colleague.

Journalists were also interested to know more about the prospects for economic integration on the post-Soviet space. In response to the journalists’ question, Mr Putin said that Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation would not interfere with coordination of efforts within the Eurasian Economic Cooperation (EurAsEC) organisation or the CIS. He said his country intended to work towards a CIS free trade area. At the moment, he said, an intensive and positive dialogue was under way to agree the positions of the Commonwealth members on the issue.

President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan stressed that the goals pursued by the CIS and EurAsEC coincided and that EurAsEC’s efforts would go a long way towards introducing the practice of a free-trade area.

In turn, the Ukrainian head of state, Leonid Kuchma, noted that both Ukraine and Russia were interested in the free-trade principle and were close to seeing it enacted.