Ankvab: ‘I Have No Illusions About Ties with EU’

Abkhaz leader, Alexander Ankvab, told visiting British Ambassador to Georgia, Judith Gough, in Sokhumi on February 20, that he was not expecting progress in Sokhumi’s relations with the European Union anytime soon, the Abkhaz news agency Apsnipress reported on Tuesday.
 
“Relations with the European Union are not the best and I am not sure they will change in the near future. I don’t have any illusions about that,” Ankvab was quoted by the Abkhaz news agency Apsnipress.

He reiterated, that supporting Tbilisi’s policy of “engagement and non-recognition” by the EU would yield no results.

“The truth is that no project created in the Georgian political environment will make it in Abkhazia. We’ve gone through a very difficult path of development and difficulties were much more on this path than Europeans can imagine,” Ankvab said, adding that he saw no sense in further meetings with the Europeans.

Earlier this month Ankvab told visiting head of the EU delegation in Georgia, Philip Dimitrov, that the EU should not waste either time or money on its approach of “engagement and non-recognition” as such policy was deemed to be counterproductive by Sokhumi.