Georgia Seeks International Efforts, as Putin Says Peacekeepers will Stay
Russia will maintain its peacekeeping troops in the conflict zones on post-Soviet space despite provocations, President Vladimir Putin said on June 27 – two weeks before the Georgian Parliament launches consideration of Russian peacekeepers’ performance in the Abkhaz conflict zone. “Our final position will depend on international stance; on the results of a meeting between the [Georgian and U.S.] Presidents in Washington [on July 5], as well as on those consultations, which are planned to be held at an international level until making a final decision,” MP Gabashvili said. He said that Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze will participate in an annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which will be held in Brussels on July 3-7. Then she will travel to New York where Burjanadze is expected to address the UN Security Council over the situation in Abkhazia on July 11. MP Gabashvili also noted an importance of G8 Foreign Ministerial summit in Moscow on June 29, which is also expected to discuss issues related with the conflict resolution. Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian REN TV on June 26 that “our partners” from G8 are insisting on discussion of the conflicts. “We have an opportunity [to do so]; each participant [of the summit] has right to push any kind of issue [for consideration] in frames of special section [of agenda] under the name “various,” Lavrov said. It seems that the government is hesitant to undertaking this radical step and the Parliament – controlled by the President Saakashvili’s party – is less expected as well to take a decision demanding an immediate withdrawal of the Russian peacekeepers from Abkhazia. Hence, a resolution on Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia apparently will resemble the one which the Parliament passed on February 15 in respect of the Russian peacekeepers in the South Ossetian conflict zone. The latter resolution, on the one hand, gives the Georgian government space to intensify diplomatic efforts aiming at internationalization of the current Russian-led peacekeeping operation in South Ossetia without specifying timeframes or deadlines; on the other hand, the resolution also leaves room for a demand to immediately cease the current peacekeeping operation. President Saakashvili hailed this resolution as “flexible.” “At that time the government insisted to take this flexible resolution [on peacekeepers in South Ossetia],” MP Gabashvili said. The government’s stance in favor of “flexible” approach came after the U.S. called for caution while deciding about the Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. A similar position was voiced by the international community in respect of Abkhazia as well after a high-level delegation of the Group of Friends of UN Secretary General (involving diplomats from Germany, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States) said on May 25 that Russian peacekeepers are “currently playing an important stabilizing role in the conflict zone.”
“On the CIS space our state is directly involved in resolution of number of conflict. And I want to stress that we will continue to perform our peacekeeping missions, despite open provocations we face,” Putin said while addressing Russian diplomats on June 27.
The Georgian Parliament is expected to consider the Russian peacekeeping troops’ performance in the Abkhaz conflict zone at a special session on July 13-15 as it is envisaged by the Parliament’s resolution passed in October, 2005.
“The resolution will be realistic and very principled,” MP Kote Gabashvili, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs, told Civil Georgia on June 28.
But he noted that no final position has been outlined yet exactly what kind of resolution it will be and whether the Parliament will demand an immediate withdrawal of the peacekeepers from Abkhazia or not.
The Georgian government, like the Parliament, is also looking forward to high-profile international consultations. On June 14 Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said that the Georgian government has not yet finally decided the fate of the Russian peacekeeping troops stationed in the Abkhaz conflict zone and added that the Parliament has a decisive say in this issue. He also warned that Georgia should be well-prepared for a radical decision in respect to the Russian peacekeepers, as it will change “the entire dynamics of conflict resolution.”