| Tbilisi and Sukhumi almost agreed not to fight Tbilisi and Sukhumi are close to signing the Agreement on International Guarantees of Non-Resumption of War, which has been in the works for four years now. The special representative of the President of Georgia at the Georgian-Abkhaz negotiations, Irakli Alasania, told reporters that Mikheil Saakashvili is ready “without preconditions at any time” to meet with the leader of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh. And for a full-scale settlement, sign a document “which will reflect the fair interests of the Abkhaz and Georgian sides.”
Sergei Bagapsh, who will arrive in St. Petersburg today for negotiations with Russian investors, did not rule out the possibility of a meeting with Mikheil Saakashvili before the end of December. But Vremya Novostey's Sukhumi sources believe that the meeting will most likely take place early next year. According to the document, which the presidents of Georgia and Abkhazia must sign, the UN (the mechanism remains to be worked out additionally) and the Russian peacekeepers who have been on the dividing line since 1994 under the auspices of the CIS could become guarantors of peace.
The fate of the peacekeeping operation came into question after the Georgian parliament in October announced the possibility of withdrawing the “ineffective” Russian contingent after July 1, 2006. Yesterday, the president of the unrecognized republic, Sergei Bagapsh, said: “Abkhazia has a negative attitude towards the possible replacement of Russian peacekeepers with a mixed peacekeeping contingent. If Russian peacekeepers are withdrawn from the conflict zone, as required in Georgia, we will take their place on the border, strengthen it, making it a real border of an independent state.”
These days, a new scandal has erupted around Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia. In an NTV report on the dispatch of “blue helmets” from the Volga-Ural Military District to the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, private Dmitry Ionov, trying on a bulletproof vest, shared his knowledge. According to him, “Abkhazia has always been an independent state and was only part of Georgia for 30 or 40 years,” “currently Abkhazia is fighting for independence” and “Georgia’s territorial claims are seemingly unfounded.”
After this, Russian Ambassador Vladimir Chkhikvishvili was summoned to the Georgian Foreign Ministry to explain what kind of instructions peacekeepers receive. Tbilisi proposes not to allow peacekeepers “savvy” in this way into the country and to turn off the broadcasting of Russian TV channels. Mr. Chkhikvishvili said: “I do not see the need to comment on and evaluate the stories broadcast by this or that Russian or Georgian television company, since this will take us far.” The Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia issued a commentary saying that “the story about Russian military personnel who underwent training in Samara for service in the Abkhaz conflict zone indicates that historical facts are distorted in lectures for them, which contributes to the formation of a negative opinion among the peacekeeping force military personnel about Georgians and Georgia".
This scandal may affect the plans of Saakashvili and Bagapsh. It was planned that the agreement would be initialed by their authorized representatives at a meeting on security guarantees in the capital of Abkhazia on December 19-21. But this round is postponed. It was assumed that the presidents would sign the document in Geneva in January or February at negotiations under the auspices of the Group of Friends of Georgia, which unites the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Russia and France. There are also options to hold a meeting of presidents on the territory of Russia, as the main facilitating party. Or in Abkhazia itself. Mikhail VIGNANSKY, Tbilisi |
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