Abashidze Visits Azerbaijan after Talks in Armenia

Aslan Abashidze, head of the Adjara Autonomous Republic left for Baku from Yerevan late on November 11, where he held talks with Armenian President Robert Kocharian.

Kakha Imnadze, the spokesman of the Georgian President, dismissed as “absurd” the recent statements by the opposition leaders, who claimed that the visit of Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze to Armenia was connected with recent developments in the country.

Mikheil Saakashvili, the opposition leader said, while commenting on Abashidze’s visit, that Shevardnadze and Abashidze aim to provoke interethnic conflict in Georgia’s south-eastern province of Samtskhe-Javakheti, populated by the ethnic Armenians, in order to maintain power.

While another opposition leader Zurab Zhvania supposed that Abashidze visit might be caused by Shevardnadze’s intention to transfer power to Abashidze. Adjarian leader’s visits to Armenia and Azerbaijan followed the bilateral meeting between Abashidze and Shevardnadze in Adjarian capital Batumi on November 10. 

Upon his return to Tbilisi Shevardnadze held phone conversations with the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents, who also pledged their support to the President Shevardnadze to overcome the current crisis in the country.

“Abashidze’s visit to Armenia and his meeting with President Kocharyan was scheduled before Shevardnadze’s arrival in Batumi. If it were a confidential visit, you [reporters] would never have learnt about it,” Shevardnadze’s spokesman Kakha Imnadze said in the interview with Tbilisi-based TV company Mze (the Sun) late on November 11.   

He said Aslan Abashidze also arrived in Baku to meet Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.