Georgian Foreign Minister Visits Moscow
Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili is in Moscow on November 1 to hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in an attempt to lay the ground for easing the current tensions between the two countries.
The meeting, which will take place on the sideline of the summit of Foreign Ministers from the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC), will be the first high-level talks since the worst crisis of recent years erupted between Russia and Georgia in late September.
“We are determined to be constructive and are ready to take into consideration Moscow’s interests in the Caucasus. But we do expect the same from the Russian side as well. We are going to Moscow to see what Russia wants,” Gela Bezhuashvili told Georgian reporters in Baku, Azerbaijan prior to his departure to Moscow.
In an interview with the BBC Gela Bezhashvili said that his priority will be to get Russian economic sanctions lifted.
Bezhuashvili, accompanied by State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues Merab Antadze, had to travel to Moscow via Baku, as direct transportation links with Georgia were cut by Russia on October 3.
Russian news agencies reported on October 31, quoting an unnamed Kremlin official, that Russian President Vladimir Putin declined a Georgian offer to meet with visiting Foreign Minister Bezhuashvili.
“The issue of possible talks between the President of Russia and the Georgian Foreign Minister was discussed on the eve of Gela Bezhuashvili’s arrival in Moscow. However, President Putin decided to decline this meeting,” Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies quoted the Kremlin source.
But Bezhuashvili denied the report. “It was not planned at all. I do not know why this news is disseminated by Russian agencies,” he told reporters on November 1.
Bezhuashvili told reporters on October 31 that his talks with the Russian officials are also aimed to prepare the ground for a potential meeting between President Saakashvili and his Russian counterpart, which, if agreed to, will most likely take place in Minsk, Belarus on the sidelines of the CIS summit in late November.
President Saakashvili has expressed his readiness for top-level talks several times recently. After an informal EU-Russian summit in Lahti, President Putin said on October 20 that Moscow is “quite satisfied with the signals manifesting Tbilisi’s readiness to improve our relations.”
Meanwhile, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Igor Ivanov said on October 31 that Georgia should sign an agreement with the Abkhaz and South Ossetian sides on the non-use of force.
Georgia has so far refused to sign the agreements, saying that an international peacekeeping force should replace the current Russian-led peacekeeping operation as the guarantor of such an agreement.
“First of all, Georgia should sign these agreements… If Georgia follows this path and not the path of threats and provocations, which consistently take place, the atmosphere will change [in Russo-Georgian relations],” RIA Novosti news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
The Georgian Foreign Minster already met with his Armenian counterpart Vardan Oskanian in Moscow on November 1 on the sidelines of the BSEC summit. Armenian businessmen are also reportedly suffering from Russia’s economic sanctions on Georgia because they are forced to redirect import routes, which increases expenditures from 7% to 20%.