For Lack of a Wreath
// Georgia downgrades Sergey Lavrov
Diplomacy
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov arrived in Tbilisi on Thursday to prepare a Russian-Georgian agreement on friendship and neighborliness. His visit began with a huge scandal as he refused to visit the memorial to Georgian soldiers who died for the integrity of the country. Speaker of the Parliament Nino Burjanadze accused Lavrov of supporting separatists and the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced that it was lowering the status of the Russian minister from official to working. They then began negotiations, but they weren't talking about friendship.
Lavrov's visit had been planned several months ago. Meetings were planned with Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili, Speaker of the Parliament Nino Burjanadze and President Mikhail Saakashvili. The Georgian president has, however, been avoiding the Russian foreign minister “in close company” as a sign of his displeasure with Russian President Vladimir Putin's slowness to repay a visit to Tbilisi, as state protocol requires. The Kremlin's position has long been that Putin will not visit Georgia until their main bilateral problems are solved and a basic agreement on interstate relations is signed. Georgia is the only country in the CIS with which Russia does not have such an agreement.
Lavorov's trip now was meant to be a forerunner of the visit by the Russian president. However, things went wrong from the beginning. Last week, Russian-Georgian negotiations on the status of the military bases at Batumi and Akhalkalaki reached a stalemate. Then Georgian Member of Parliament from the ruling National Movement Party Georgy Bokeria announced that Georgia may declare the Russian military bases illegal. The day before Lavrov's arrival Georgian Foreign Minister Zurabishvili once again stated Georgia's position that the agreement being prepared with Russia would not include a Georgian refusal to allow foreign military bases on its territory, as Moscow is demanding. “That proposal is unacceptable from a number of points of views and cannot be included in the bilateral agreement,” Zurabishvili said.
In other words, Russian-Georgian relations, which are troubled at best, looked especially gloomy for Lavrov's visit. The Russian minister himself was optimistic, and promised to “unfreeze the political dialog.” But it turned out otherwise.
The Georgians included the wreath-laying at the memorial on the Square of the Heroes in the program of the official out of habit. Visiting the monument to the soldiers who died for the territorial integrity of Georgia is one of the events in the official visit of any foreign guest. There are names of several thousand who died in South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the monument.
Lavrov said that the suggestion to visit the monument was made at the last moment and he, considering the “serious emotional charge” of the issue, refused. Instead, Lavrov wanted to lay a wreath on the grave of Zurab Zhvania because he had “done much to prevent escalation in the zones of conflict in Georgia and advocated peaceful settlement.”
When Lavrov was on his visit to Yerevan, Minister Zurabishvili held a special briefing to talk about the scandal. “I am convinced that, in Yerevan, where Sergey Lavrov is now, he will certainly visit the memorial to the victims of the genocide. But in Georgia, he lacks the elementary manners to take the same step,” she said. President Saakashvili immediately called a meeting with the chairman of the parliament, prime minister and foreign minister to discuss the problematic visit of Lavrov. Burjanadze told journalists afterwards that “it was hard for me to believe that the foreign minister of Russia refused to visit the memorial to the fallen fighters for the territorial integrity of Georgia. It is an unprecedented case in world history and the customs of international relations. Sergey Lavrov has thus demonstrated his open support for the separatists.” On Thursday morning, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would lower the level of Lavrov's visit from official to working. Finally, during the day on Thursday, a group of Georgian veterans of the military actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia protested in front of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi. The protesters left the ritual wreath in front of the embassy with the message “Our sympathy for the death of Russian diplomacy.”
In response, Lavrov chided Zurabishvili for revealing the incident. “Usually the program of a visit is routinely agreed on and the details remain a matter of closed working consultations,” he said. He did not, however, change his original decision, noting that visiting the memorial would not promote the peaceful settlement of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “Let us hope that this episode does not create artificial problems for fruitful negotiations with Tbilisi,” he said as he arrived in Georgia.
Dinner with Minister Zurabishvili was planned for Minister Lavrov on Thursday. The main negotiations, including those with President Saakashvili, will only be held on Friday. Considering the scandal with the memorial, table talk may not be the most pleasant. There are very few mutually satisfactory moments in bilateral relations. Zurabishvili is likely to express to Lavrov her objections to the statements by Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov: “We don't understand why, just before the visit of the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense of Russia threatens to make preventive strikes on our territory to destroy terrorists that are supposedly located there.” The Georgians will probably be glad to respond with the happy news for the Russians that EU and NATO observers may appear on their mutual border.
The eternal question of Russian military bases in Georgia will probably be the topic of interesting conversation. Moscow will most likely propose its latest compromise to Tbilisi: withdrawal within next five years after a three-year preparatory period. That is, if they receive foreign financial support for that purpose and tie the agreement to the establishment of antiterrorist centers in Batumi and Tbilisi. That way, by Moscow's thinking, the Russian military presence in Georgia will not be reduced for a single minute. That proposal is a little different from the last – that time, Moscow planned to take 11 years to leave the bases. The proposal is still far from the Georgians' potion. They want the bases emptied within three years.
In other wordû, there are no grounds to suggest that Moscow and Tbilisi will agree on anything.
Vladimir Novikov, Tbilisi; Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 18, 2005
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