KIEV (AFP) - Ukraine said Friday that it could withdraw from the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) if benefits from membership in the bloc did not improve.

"Ukraine contributes nearly one million dollars annually to the CIS," said Volodymyr Ogryzko, senior deputy foreign minister, referring to the loose Moscow-led grouping of all former Soviet republics save the Baltic states.

"If you take into account that Ukraine is a member of many other international organizations where dues are a bit smaller but the return is a lot higher, then maybe it's worth considering what funds we are using irrationally and direct them elsewhere," Interfax quoted him as saying. A day earlier, Ogryzko said in Moscow that Kiev would "analyze the pluses and minuses of continuing participation... in the CIS."

Meanwhile a top official in President Viktor Yushchenko's administration, Kostyantyn Tymoshenko, said that if the CIS did not begin to function better then the issue of Kiev withdrawing from the bloc would "arise, if not tomorrow then in the near future."

Friday's statements were the latest sign of plummeting relations between Moscow and Kiev after pro-Western Yushchenko ousted a pro-Russian regime and came to power in ex-Soviet Ukraine in the "orange revolution" presidential contest in late 2004.

Since then, the neighbors have had vitriolic clashes on gas prices and supplies, bilateral trade and Moscow's Black Sea fleet, which is based in Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea.

Georgia, which also held a pro-Western "rose revolution" in late 2003, said earlier this week that it would withdraw from the CIS if it no longer benefited from the partnership.