Translated material
Plan in the wind
In the fall, Georgians are waiting for new proposals for Abkhazia
Western mediators unexpectedly upset Georgia by allowing the possibility of the withdrawal of Georgian formations from the Kodori Gorge of Abkhazia, which Moscow has long insisted on. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, who recently held talks with the German Ambassador to Georgia Patricia Flor in Sukhumi and Tbilisi, after a meeting with the Secretary of the Security Council of the unrecognized republic Stanislav Lakoba, said, according to local agencies: “It was about the possibilities of stimulating the peace process and how to convince our friends in Georgia to withdraw their troops from the upper part of the Kodori Gorge... Otherwise, for the rest of your life, you can throw words into the wind without achieving progress.” True, later at a press conference in Tbilisi he explained that the presence of the Georgian military in the Kodori Gorge does not contradict international resolutions and previously reached agreements between the conflicting parties.Exactly two years ago, Abkhazia broke off contacts with Georgia after the entry of large Georgian formations into the Kodori Gorge, the only region of Abkhazia controlled by Tbilisi after the 1992-1993 war. Their withdrawal from the gorge and the signing of an agreement on the non-use of force are the conditions for the Abkhazians to return to the negotiation process. After the meeting with the American emissary, Stanislav Lakoba noted that the United States now “treats the position of the Abkhaz side with great understanding.”
In the middle of this month, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier met with the parties to the conflict, who, on behalf of his country as the coordinator of the “Group of Friends of the UN Secretary General for Georgia” (Germany, Great Britain, USA, France, Russia), invited Tbilisi and Sukhumi to agree on peace and reconstruction trust and the return of refugees with subsequent international investments in Abkhazia and determination of its status. After this, the head of German diplomacy was received by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who stated that it would be possible to unblock the negotiation process only after the withdrawal of Georgian troops from Kodori. But Georgia does not agree to this yet. Matthew Bryza and Patricia Flor tried to persuade the parties to the conflict to continue negotiations this week in Berlin, but there has been no response yet.
Returning from Sukhumi, Matthew Bryza spoke with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, after which he explained to journalists that he did not offer Georgia to release Kodori, but only “mentioned the position of the Abkhaz side” on this issue. But in conditions when Abkhazia does not even want to hear about negotiations without demilitarizing Kodori, and Russia maintains a firm position on this issue, Western mediators will try to talk about this with Georgia in order to find a way out of the impasse.
But in Georgia these attempts are viewed with skepticism. “In fact, one should not talk about any plan of Western mediators, be it Germany or the United States. There are only suggestions, opinions. In reality, there is only the plan of the President of Georgia, announced this spring. Everything is concrete there: the post of vice president for Abkhazia, the right to veto decisions of the central authorities on Abkhazia, the creation of free economic zones. And for us, the most important thing is to return the refugees who left Abkhazia as a result of ethnic cleansing. Most likely, in September-October, a plan of the UN Secretary General will appear, which can combine both our proposals and those of the Germans,” Shota Malashkhia, chairman of the Georgian parliament’s commission on restoring territorial integrity, told Vremya Novostei.