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Russian Peacekeepers Stay in Abkhazia
The foreign ministers of the NATO countries will meet today with Georgian Foreign Minister David Bakradze. Georgia will raise the question of changing the format of the Russian peacekeeping mission in Abkhazia. It will ask the alliance to raise the question with Russia at the April 30 NATO-Russia Council meeting. Specifically, changing the format of the peacekeeping mission would entail replacing the Russian mission with an international contingent that included the European Union and NATO, and in which Russia had no right of veto. It would also mean including the EU and OSCE in the negotiation process as full-fledged participants.
Vice president of the European Parliament Marek Sivec and the NATO secretary general's special representative on the South Caucasus Robert Simons made comments favorable to the Georgian position yesterday. However, chances are slim that the Russian mission will withdraw. In the 1994 ceasefire, it is stipulated that the presence of the UN in Abkhazia is dependent on Russia's presence. If Russia should withdraw, the UN would also have to. For NATO, the Russian transport corridor to Afghanistan, which Russia is using to manipulate the alliance, is decisive for its success there and more important than Georgia's problems in Abkhazia.
Georgian experts acknowledge that their chances are not good, although independent expert Nika Imnaishvili noted that “In the last few years, Georgian diplomacy has succeeded in including those questions in issues of the format of Russia-NATO and Russia-EU relations and Tbilisi's efforts have already begun to produce some fruit, mainly thanks to the Eastern European and Baltic countries, which are concerned that, if Moscow is able to put the squeeze on Georgia, their turns will be coming.” Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin expressed his concern to NATO General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer about “the sharper rhetoric address to Russia by official Tbilisi.” Rogozin commented that “Georgia is conducting itself provocatively. There is the impression that someone is irresponsibly seeking a pretext for war.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 29, 2008
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