Sensing that he is being squeezed off the political scene, president of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia Eduard Kokoity let it be known that he is open to dialog with Georgia.
Photo: Pavel Smertin
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Georgia Suggests Russia Overthrow Kokoity Regime
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with his Georgian colleague Gela Bezhuashvili in Istanbul today at the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization summit. Kommersant has learned that Tbilisi will propose that Moscow break off its ties with president of the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia and deal exclusively with head of the temporary administration of South Ossetia Dmitry Sanakoev. Georgia took efforts to make the suggestion hard to refuse.
Today's negotiations between Lavrov and Bezhuashvili were agreed on on June 9 at the informal CIS summit in St. Petersburg. That was when Russian President Vladimir Putin and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided that it was time to work on improving relations between the two countries and assigned their foreign ministers the task. Last week, Bezhuashvili announced that Tbilisi was preparing carefully for the negotiations. “We have serious and interesting proposals for the Russian side,” he told the press. “They are based on well-known principles – the principles of equality, territorial integrity, sovereignty and, most importantly, the principle of our sovereign choice. Bezhuashvili did not go into the specifics of the proposals he would have at the meeting in Istanbul. The Georgian press reported yesterday that the ministers would discuss the removal of the Russian embargo on a number of Georgian products and the legalization of the border crossing points on the Abkhazian and South Ossetian stretches of the Russian border with joint control over them exercised by Russia and Georgia.
A source in the Georgian government told Kommersant that the main topic of the negotiations would be settling the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. Last Tuesday, Saakashvili made it clear at the GUAM summit in Baku that he has a plan for the return of the wayward region. “It is a matter of a small amount of time. You can count the seconds,” the Georgian president claimed. “Georgia has all the resources to settle the issue. We will show the whole world how to solve such problems. It will be a good precedent for al countries.”
The most important element in the Georgian plan is depriving the current Ossetian regime, headed by Eduard Kokoity, of its political and economic support from Russia.
To do that, Kommersant's source in the Georgian government said, it will be suggested that Moscow cut off ties with Kokoity and reorient itself toward Dmitry Sanakoev, whom Tbilisi sees as the legal head of the temporary administration. If Moscow does so, Georgia is willing to entrust Moscow with the role of official guarantor of future agreements giving the unrecognized republic broad autonomy within a unified Georgia. “We will even agree to legalize the Russian military presence on our territory for an unspecified time and to remove all barriers from our side to Russia's admission to the WTO,” the source said.
Tbilisi has been grooming Sanakoev as Kokoity's successor for a long time. Last month, Georgian authorities definitively legalized the loyal temporary administration of South Ossetia, and Sanakoev is recognized as its head in a decree signed by Saakashvili. The temporary administration is supposed to pave the way for an Ossetian autonomy within Georgia. Last week, Saakashvili officially announced that Georgia would begin negotiations on autonomy with the Sanakoev government. Georgian authorities are also trying to attain international recognition for the temporary administration. Sanakoev has traveled to Brussels, where he will attend the ninth session of the parliamentary committee on Georgian-EU cooperation, which begins today. Before the left for Europe, Sanakoev promised that he would present the European parliament a plan for settling the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. In Georgia, they are counting on international recognition of Sanakoev to convince Russia to cut off relations with Kokoity. “They will have no other way after Sanakoev is recognized by the international community,” Shota Malashkhia, chairman of the Georgian parliament's commission to restore territorial integrity, told Kommersant. “In Chechnya, Russia also recognizes only one authority. What would happen if Georgia started negotiating with Chechen separatists?”
Kokoity has been seriously alarmed by this turn of events. He tried to seize the initiative by taking the unprecedented step of appearing live on Georgian Imeda television to propose beginning peace negotiations with Georgia. “Let's do everything we can to keep the peace. We have to live together here. Political ambition is political ambition everywhere, no matter who is counting the seconds. Let's rebuild all the bridges, let's restore dialog. There is no need to avoid a direct man's conversation,” he said. Georgian officials are ignoring the appeal. They do not look too confident in Tbilisi that Russia, which has jealously protested Kokoity so far, will spurn him so easily. By proposing that Moscow break off its undeclared alliance with the Ossetian leader, Tbilisi is also trying to cut off Tskhinvali's aid from Russia. Last Wednesday, Saakashvili's decree “On Denouncing the Russian-Georgian Agreement on Measures for Economic Rehabilitation in the Georgian-Ossetian Conflict Zone.” That agreement was signed in 1995 and extended in 2000. It gives Russia and Georgia equal shares of responsibility for the rehabilitation of the conflict zone, where hundreds of villages were burned between 1989 and 1992 and the infrastructure of almost all enterprises was destroyed. Georgian officials have been accusing Russia for years of providing the South Ossetian government with money without Georgia's approval, as required under the agreement.
“Russia is making unsupervised financial infusions in South Ossetia, which is an nonconciliated expense of funds by the South Ossetian government, including for military needs,” a spokesman for the Georgian State Minister for Conflict Resolution told Kommersant. The construction of an electric line between Russia and South Ossetia and a gas pipeline connecting South Ossetia to the Russian network were given as examples of unilateral Russian activity. Russia has yet to respond to those allegations. The Russian embassy in Tbilisi stated that it has not been informed of the dissolution of the agreement. Georgia is hoping that the annulment of the agreement will help establish control over the financial flows into the unrecognized republic. “Russia used to skirt the OSCE to give money to Kokoity. But now there will be a common till and all the money will go to the recognized structures of Sanakoev,” Malashkhia told Kommersant. Malashkhia considers Kokoity's days numbered. “There is one legitimate authority, and no other structures can exist. Kokoity can become a dove of peace like Arafat and receive the Nobel Prize.”
Vladimir Solovyev; Vladimir Novikov, Tbilisi
All the Article in Russian as of June 25, 2007
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