Yeltsin concerned over the CIS future

President Yeltsin has expressed concern that some former Soviet republics want to quit the the Commonwealth of Independent States CIS.

Mr Yeltsin said Moscow had to admit that it let the CIS issue slip away in 1997, but said that now the grouping would enter a period of active work.

His comments follow a Central Asian summit in Ashkhabat earlier this month, in which the Presidents of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed that each state would decide independently on the form of their participation in the CIS, and committed themselves to more economic and political co-operation within the Central Asian region.

Some member-states strongly criticised Russia at a CIS summit in Moldova last year, saying it tried to dominate the grouping.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service