Russian President Boris Yeltsin won a strong endorsement Friday from leaders of other former Soviet republics, who elected him chairman of their commonwealth for the first half of 1994.
Yeltsin assured a summit meeting of the 12-nation Commonwealth of Independent States that Russia would not try to rebuild an empire, despite the victory of extreme nationalists in parliamentary elections.Saparmurad Niyazov, president of the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan and host of the summit, told a news conference that the commonwealth leaders unanimously endorsed the policies Yeltsin has pursued both before and after Russia's Dec. 12 elections.
The commonwealth leaders also signed 21 accords, including a temporary economic union and agreements on coordinating prices and taxes.
"Our only goal is to raise the living standard of our peoples. It is vitally important to preserve all the good things that united our peoples over many decades," Niyazov said.
The loose commonwealth, formed when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, has been torn by disputes among its members, including a 6-year war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and conflict between Russian and Ukraine over elimination of nuclear weapons.
In recent months, however, the commonwealth has gained strength. The driving factor has been economic cooperation, because most of its members are in even worse shape economically than Russia.
The commonwealth now consists of all the former Soviet republics except the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
One of the documents signed by Yeltsin today reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each of the commonwealth's members and pledges that they will not use force, or the threat of force, against each other.