Georgia Hesitates to Break off Relations with Russia
// "Experts will determine it"
Tbilisi unwilling to break off the relations with Moscow
Despite the military conflict with Russia and the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Georgian government hasn’t dared undertake extreme measures – breaking off diplomatic relations with Moscow. Tbilisi says it’ll soon make its mind. Today it plans to officially register the Russian troops’ occupation of several Georgian territories.
Yesterday Georgia continued giving commentary over Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgian politicians were quite harsh. However, on Tuesday they would insist on breaking off diplomatic relations with Moscow, whereas yesterday they said that the relations must be minimized. “We’ll drastically reduce diplomatic relations, concerning consuls and envoys,” stated Georgian Reintegration Minister Timur Yakobashvili. In the evening Georgia’s Foreign Office announced that the staff of the Russian diplomatic mission in Moscow is reduced to two people.
Breaking off relations is usually prior to hostilities between two parties. However, neither Moscow nor Tbilisi did it before the conflict or during it. The Georgian Embassy in Moscow didn’t halt its work, although Ambassador Erosi Kitsmarishvili was recalled on July 10 – a month before the conflict escalated. The Russian Embassy in Georgia, headed by Ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko, keeps on with its mission and is not going to reduce its staff.
The final decision will be taken in the near future. “It is experts who are to sort it out,” said Chairman of the European Integration Committee of the Georgian Parliament David Darchiashvili. So far the Georgian parliament decided to concentrate on drafting a resolution reading that Russia occupied several Georgian territories. Yesterday this document was thrashed out at the Parliament’s Bureau, and today it is to be adopted. “The MPs decided to draft an act about occupied territories. It is essential to legally register the fact of their annexation by Russia,” Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on International Affairs Lasha Zhvania told Kommersant. According to him, it is not ruled out that the Constitution will be amended as well.
Meanwhile the Georgian Ministry of Justice informed that they have already prepared a suit against Russia to file it in international courts. The suits regard the genocide of the Georgian population in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and ethnic cleansing in Georgia’s former autonomies. Speaker of the Georgian Parliament David Bakradze, which is now on his visit to the United States, anticipates that Russia will find itself in complete isolation.
For all that, Russia’s troops are still in control of the Georgian territories along the perimeter of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian border. The Georgian port of Poti is controlled by Russians too. The military have set up a few outposts on the roads, which practically paralyzed the work of the port. That is why American ships which delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia, had to unload in the port of Batumi, where the U.S. Dallas ship appeared yesterday. Head of the Georgian General Staff Zaza Gogava explained it by the fact that “Russia’s military sank several Georgian ships in the port of Poti to complicate coming into the area of water, and they may have mined the port. That’s why it was decided to let the American ships come into the port of Batumi.”
Russia’s generals are still worried by the American and NATO ships appearing in the Black Sea. Russia’s Moskva guided missile cruiser, the Black sea Fleet flagship, came into the port of Sukhumi yesterday. “Russia’s fleet began watching the NATO ships in the Black Sea,” said Deputy Chief of Russia’s General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn. He pointed out that the Black sea is “too small” to the military ships which are now there.
Vladimir Solovyov; Georgy Dvali, Tbilisi
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 28, 2008
|
