Date
Author
Михаил ВИГНАНСКИЙ; Тбилиси; Виктор ВОЛОДИН
Source
Preserved copy
Translated material
Independence by video
For the sake of Abkhazia, Russia slammed the door on the UN Security Council
Tomorrow the UN Security Council plans to adopt a resolution on Abkhazia, extending the mandate of its observers for another six months. Currently, there are more than a hundred of them in the confrontation zone. However, the new resolution does not foretell a quick end to the conflict amid intensifying disputes between the parties to the settlement. The review of relations between Tbilisi and Sukhumi on April 10 ended in scandal. Russia's permanent representative to the UN Vitaly Churkin (pictured) even left the Security Council meeting in protest against bias towards the parties to the conflict.Russia, as a facilitating party in the Georgian-Abkhaz settlement, proposed to hear at the meeting the head of the Foreign Ministry of the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia, Sergei Shamba. But the US never issued him an entry visa. Vitaly Churkin recalled that this month the president of the Serbian province of Kosovo (not subject to the authority of Belgrade and under the control of the UN) took part in a discussion, albeit unofficial, of the Kosovo issue in the UN Security Council. So the Russian diplomat called the exclusion of the Abkhaz representative from the discussions “a serious political and diplomatic mistake.”
In this regard, Deputy Director of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Zharikhin noted to Vremya Novostei that the question of “whether or not to allow a minister of a self-proclaimed republic to attend a meeting of the UN Security Council should be decided by the UN Secretariat, and not the US State Department.”
Russia demonstrated a video message from Sergei Shamba at the Security Council, who proposed recognizing Abkhazia as a sovereign state. According to him, mediation by the UN, which “has not become an equidistant party,” has no prospects, since Abkhazia does not intend to be part of Georgia. Immediately after this, the Russian representative left the Security Council meeting, to which US Representative Alejandro Wolff disapprovingly stated that “Ambassador Churkin, as has happened to him before, tried to create false analogies with Kosovo, maliciously trying to confuse the discussion.”
“It was clear in advance that the United States would strongly oppose the extension of the Kosovo precedent to Abkhazia,” Alexey Vlasov, deputy director of the Moscow State University Information and Analytical Center for the study of socio-political processes in the post-Soviet space, told VN. According to our interlocutor, the UN Security Council meeting “resembled a pre-prepared scenario that Georgia, Russia and the United States played out to demonstrate to the international community their own perception of the Abkhaz problem.”
The previous resolution 1716, adopted by the Security Council in the fall of 2006, obliged Tbilisi to refrain from provocations in the conflict zone, and Sukhumi to seriously approach the problem of the return of refugees. “Provocations” meant actions in the Kodori Gorge, the only region of Abkhazia controlled by Georgia. In the summer of 2006, Tbilisi carried out a military operation there, after which it installed the government of Abkhazia in exile in the gorge, promising that over time this administration would relocate to Sukhumi. In response, Abkhazia suspended its participation in the negotiations, demanding the complete demilitarization of the gorge.
Georgia, however, has only reduced the number of its armed personnel in the gorge - according to the latest monitoring, 284 police officers and a hundred border guards from among local residents remain there. At the end of the Security Council meeting, Vitaly Churkin noted that Russia “continues to be concerned about the situation in the Kodori Gorge, where the Georgian armed presence exceeds the limits of what is reasonable and permissible.”
Nevertheless, Tbilisi is generally pleased with the way the discussions in the Security Council went. Shota Malashkhia, Chairman of the Georgian Parliament Commission for the Restoration of Territorial Integrity, told VN: “There is a positive trend towards Tbilisi from the UN, and this is the main thing. In the next six months, until the next Security Council review of the situation in Abkhazia, we should focus on changing the format of the peacekeeping operation. These should be international police under the auspices of the UN and, in parallel, Georgian-Abkhaz structures." The deputy admitted that the goal is to ensure that the conflict zone “is not dominated by Russian peacekeepers” (they have been in Abkhazia through the CIS since 1994).
This statement allows us to assert that “Tbilisi is not ready for negotiations on Abkhazia,” comments Vladimir Zharikhin. In his opinion, Georgian proposals boil down to the idea of restoring control over Abkhazia on the basis of the Georgian constitution, which was in force before the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict of 1992-1993. VN’s interlocutor believes that “the settlement of the conflict will not move forward until the Georgian side admits that it is impossible to return to the past, that it is necessary to negotiate and make mutual concessions.”
Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, who participated in the UN Security Council meeting, did not fail to emphasize that Abkhazia “has no prospects” for independence. Expressing incomprehension that Sergei Shamba’s appeal was disseminated by the Russian mission, he stated that consideration of the issue of the status of Abkhazia cannot be legitimate, since about 300 thousand refugees, most of them Georgians, left the territory of the former autonomous republic. The remaining “20% of the population of pre-conflict Abkhazia cannot decide the fate of all of Abkhazia.” “We will strive for the return of refugees and restoration of an objective picture,” the prime minister said.
Tbilisi's position was understood by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She said Russia must respect Georgia's territorial integrity and not do anything "that would imply the right of separatist movements in South Ossetia or Abkhazia to claim independence." Moscow is convinced that Tbilisi will continue to rely on the support of Washington and part of the European bureaucracy in diplomatic pressure on Russia.
The head of the presidential administration of Abkhazia, Valery Arshba, was indignant at the statements of the Georgian prime minister. “After Nogaideli’s words that Abkhazia has no prospects, what kind of negotiations with Georgia can we talk about?!” - he told our newspaper. According to him, Sukhumi will not agree with the proposal to change the format of the peacekeeping operation.