Dissatisfied with his status at the Geneva talks, Abkhaz Foreign Office Chief Sergei Shamba, foreground, left the meeting hall, with his South Ossetian counterpart Murat Djioyev, background, following him.
Photo: ITAR-TASS
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Parties Didn’t Find Common Georgian Language
// Russia, Abkhazia and Georgia peacefully squabbled in Geneva
Geneva peace talks turned out a complete failure
Geneva peace negotiations for the Georgian crisis, which were outlined in the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan, finished with a big scandal yesterday. Abkhaz and South Ossetian representatives refused to participate in the discussion because they didn’t want to accept the status they were offered. According to the information of Kommersant, first an open raw broke out between Abkhaz and Russian representatives, and then the Russian and the Georgian delegations left the negotiations accusing each other of calling them off. The European Union immediately responded to the failure of the talks in Geneva: at yesterday’s summit in Brussels EU leaders decided to postpone the resumption of talks with Russia to conclude the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA).
The unrecognized demarche
Peace talks in Geneva began in the atmosphere of secrecy: the journalists that had gathered long before the meeting in front of the Palace of Nations were not allowed inside, and it was even prohibited to take shots of the delegates. The meeting was to start with a plenary session, where Abkhaz and South Ossetian representatives were not invited according to an agreement reached in advance, sources of Kommersant with the EU headquarters in Brussels said. They were to join the meeting’s participants later, during debates held by two groups, with refugees’ security being in the spotlight.
The plenary session started with wearisome waiting: the Russian delegation, headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, was late. Russian diplomats arrived 50 minutes later – to the end of the plenary session. According to one of the participants of the consultations, Russians explained their being late with reluctance to take part in the meeting where neither Abkhazia nor South Ossetia, which were officially recognized by Russia, was represented.
“After it, to address routine issues, they had to devise a special format – an informal meeting o the Russian delegation, Abkhaz and South Ossetian representatives, EU Special Representative for Central Asia Pierre Morel, and the U.S. delegation headed by Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried. Georgians didn’t participate in that meeting at all,” a source of Kommersant said. But all of a sudden a quarrel broke out between Abkhaz Foreign Office Chief Sergei Shamba and Russian diplomats. “Shamba demanded that his delegation and that of South Ossetia should be granted the status of independent states, with the Georgian language excluded from the forum’s official languages,” the source added. “Grigory Karasin and Andrei Kelin (Chief of the Russian Foreign Ministry CIS department, in charge of the relations with Russia – Kommersant) tried to pacify Mr Shamba, but he left the venue with Boris Chochiyev (acting Prime Minister of South Ossetia – Kommersant). The Russians even had to apologize for them.”
Coming out of the Palace of Nations later, Sergei Shamba looked triumphant. “We didn’t accept the status, and the negotiations were called off. And the Georgian party didn’t like it,” he told the press. “There is no point holding the discussion without us. No problem can be resolved without Abkhazia in this region. And without South Ossetia either.”
After the representatives of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali left, the debates in the work groups virtually failed, and the talks in general too. According to the interlocutors of Kommersant, the irritation of Sergei Shamba and Bois Chochiyev can be accounted for Tbilisi’s including representatives of the pro-Georgian administrations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in its delegation. “At the Geneva talks I represented a legitimate administrative body on the territory of the former South Ossetian autonomy within Georgia. However, the representatives of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali, who were admitted to Geneva, decided to stage a demarche and sabotage the meeting,” Chief of South Ossetia’s interim administration Dmitry Sanakoyev, who participated in yesterday’s negotiations, told Kommersant.
Cross-accusations
Moscow and Tbilisi put the blame on each other. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was the first to comment on it. “Despite the Georgian party’s constructive mood, despite the chance to hold serious talks brokered by the EU and the U.S., the Russian delegation left the hall. Just like the Soviet Union used to do,” Mikhail Saakashvili stated. “It all once again shows what people and what level of diplomacy we are to deal with. If anyone had had any illusions that something can be done under such circumstances, they have vanished now.”
Then Grigory Karasin briefed the press. “It was Georgia that called off the meeting – it refused to participate in the plenary session. The Georgian party’s behavior is hard to explain, to say the least. Their reluctance to take part in that plenary session made further debate pointless,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister stated. According to him, Tbilisi had planned to call off the talks, which is why it included Dmitry Sanakoyev in its delegation. “Our Abkhaz and South Ossetian partners could not tolerate it, it was provocation,” he explained. At the same time, from the Russian diplomat’s viewpoint, Georgia didn’t succeed in calling off the meeting, which means that Russia fully complied with the commitments of the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan. Grigory Karasin found another positive point what happened, “The meeting was organized, with South Ossetia and Abkhazia invited, which is for the first time since Russia’s recognition of their independence. So they de facto became participants of important international formats.”
The Georgian party disagreed with Grigory Karasin. “It is a lie. The entire Georgian delegation attended the morning plenary session. Only Russia’s delegation was missing,” Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze, who headed the delegation, told Kommersant. “Mr Karasin shouldn’t have said it. Though I understand in what position he has found himself. To us, it is very important that the negotiations were held, with the EU and the U.S. participating.”
In the evening even the meeting’s organizers had to confess it was a failure. “They do not talk with each other any longer,” UN Spokesperson Yelena Ponomareva said. Pierre Morel stated that the stumbling block was the status of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian delegations. Only Head of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) Johan Verbeke tried to make believe that nothing wrong happened. “It is just a break, the process is under way,” he comforted journalists at the final press conference. But the diplomats had to confess that negotiations wouldn’t be resumed until November 18.
Unclear prospects
Yesterday western diplomats doubted that it will be possible to persuade Russians and Georgians to negotiate in the near future. “Just remember the difficulty the organizers had preparing this meeting. We had a minor task in mind: to launch a dialogue and convince the parties to gather here in two weeks. But after today’s scandal it will be hard to persuade them to negotiate even after November 18,” a European diplomat complained to Kommersant. Indeed, a few days before the talks it was unknown whether they will be held at all. It need be said that the French and Russian Presidents had scheduled it back September 8. According to the sources of Kommersant, consultations did not begin until last week, and proceeded “with provocative statements and mutual accusations”.
The forum was even called differently by the parties. A high-ranking Russian diplomat told Kommersant that “international talks about providing security in South Ossetia and Abkhazia will be held”. However, a representative of the European Union explained Kommersant that the meeting could be called neither conference nor negotiations because no resolution is planned to be adopted on its completion. Bu the bone of contention was the status of the Abkhaz and South Ossetian delegations. As a result it was decided that Sukhumi and Tskhinvali’s emissaries will participate in work groups’ debates only. Georgia’s objections were rejected with a diplomatic trick: there was to be a plate with a name in front of each participant, but without mentioning nationality and official position.
Nevertheless, the disagreement between the parties didn’t concern formalities only. The day before the talks started the Russian Foreign ministry issued a press release where it outlined Moscow’s targets: Georgia’s signing a ceasefire treaty and working out a cluster of measures to impose a ban on heavy weapons supplies to Georgia. Only after it Russia was ready to discuss the problem of refuges’ returning to South Ossetia. In its turn, the Georgian Foreign Ministry intended to call on Moscow to pull out its troops from South Ossetia’s Akhalgori district and the Upper Kodori and then move all Russian units to Russia, with international contingent substituting for them. At the meeting in Geneva, from Georgia’s viewpoint, documents allowing Georgians to return to Abkhazia and South Ossetia were to be adopted. Only after it Georgia would agree to discuss the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and with the Georgian territorial integrity being the key principle at the negotiations.
The failure of the Geneva forum has already caused diplomatic problems to Russia. European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner stated yesterday that the matter of resuming negotiations for the PCA with Moscow has been postponed once again – till the EU-Russia summit, planned for November.
Alexander Gabuev, Vladimir Solovyov; Igor Sedykh, Geneva
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 16, 2008
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