Abkhazia Agenda Overshadowed by South Ossetia

Last December President Mikheil Saakashvili instructed the government and requested civil society organizations to develop comprehensive settlement proposals for the conflicts in Georgia’s breakaway regions. It was thought that the development of such plans on Abkhazia was far advanced as compared to South Ossetia.

However, Tbilisi has recently tabled peace proposals for South Ossetia and shelved plans for Abkhazia.  Moreover, Georgian officials have changed their stance and toughened their position towards Abkhazia’s secessionist leadership in Sokhumi.

During a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on January 26 President Saakashvili unexpectedly announced that the peace process in Abkhazia is currently impossible because the “Abkhazian side has left the negotiating table” and pointed to the fact that hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians were driven out from Abkhazia during the 1992-93 war.

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania was even more radical when he linked a resumption of talks with the Abkhaz side to the recognition of, as he put it, the “ethnic cleansing of Georgians” in the region.

“The most important thing is that a tragic fact must be recognized to continue talks on Abkhazia – ethnic cleansing of Georgians took place in Abkhazia in 1993; hundreds of thousands of Georgians were driven away from their homes,” Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania told the Tbilisi-based Imedi television on January 27.

Some political analysts in Georgia suggest that the decision of Saakashvili’s administration to toughen its stance over Abkhazia is mainly for internal consumption. “These kinds of statements [by Saakashvili and Zhvania] have nothing to do with Abkhazian conflict settlement. These statements were made purely for populist streak and are addressed mostly to Georgians, rather than to the Abkhaz population,” political analyst Paata Zakareishvili, who is actively engaged in Abkhazia-related issues, told Civil Georgia.

Since last December several proposals for Abkhaz peace plan have been unveiled by various, mainly non-governmental, groups. One of the streams of opinion about Abkhazia conflict settlement argues that the creation of a federated Georgian-Abkhaz state is inevitable. Proponents of this vision also say Georgia should recognize its own responsibility for the bloody conflict in the early 1990s as a precondition for launching peace talks.

These and other conditions, such as granting ethnic Abkhaz quotas in the national parliament and over-representation in Abkhazia’s own legislature are perceived by Georgia’s nationalist forces and many displaced persons as defeatist. One group of politicians, as well as representatives of the “old-time” academic circles and intelligentsia, has recently even set up a movement – “For Unitary Georgia” – which opposes the creation of a federal Georgian-Abkhaz state.

“Recently, several peace plans over Abkhazia have been prepared and this is a very positive trend. But the government has not focused on any of these plans yet. No working group, which will be in charge of consultations with the Abkhaz side, has been set up so far. Maybe there are some talks behind the scenes, but no such talks are being held publicly,” Zakareishvili says.

But Georgian State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues Goga Khaindrava argues that the recent statements by President Saakashvili over Abkhazia do not mean that Tbilisi has stopped working over the proposals to settle the Abkhaz conflict.

“There are just no appropriate political conditions in Abkhazia yet,” says Khaindrava, “a military solution to this conflict is ruled out, so we should start finding ways to launch dialogues with the Abkhaz side. But this requires time.”

Ramaz Klimiashvili, who is a political aide to President Saakashvili, says that the Abkhaz conflict is more complicated than the one in South Ossetia. “There is no doubt that we should find the way how to approach [newly elected Abkhaz President] Sergey Bagapsh. This conflict is different [from the South Ossetian one]. It was a huge mistake by some Georgian politicians and the media as well to describe Bagapsh as a pro-Georgian figure. This kind of stance has further complicated the situation and forced Bagapsh to become more radical towards Tbilisi. Now he has to prove more vigorously [to his constituency] that he has no intention of integrating Abkhazia into Georgia,” Ramaz Klimiashvili told Civil Georgia.

Some observers note that the toughening of Tbilisi’s stance may have followed statements made by Bagapsh in Moscow, in which he ruled out the possibility of a return of the displaced persons to Abkhazia.

Paata Zakareishvili also agrees that the political situation in Abkhazia itself is not very favorable for the launching of serious talks on conflict resolution. He said that despite relative stability in Abkhazia after the post-election crisis the political situation is far from clear. Relations between Sergey Bagapsh and Vice-President Raul Khajimba, with whom Russia forced Bagapsh to share power with, are far from cozy.

But Zakareishvili, who has links with various Abkhaz non-governmental organizations, says that representatives of Abkhaz civil society are waiting for Tbilisi’s proposals. “They tell us: ‘you have not determined yet what kind of state [arrangement] you want.’ But I hope that we – the Georgian and Abkhaz civil society representatives – will start consultations over these issues by March or April,” he added.