Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Tbilisi Poised for New Conflicts With Rebel Regions - part 2

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Tbilisi Poised for New Conflicts With Rebel Regions - part 2

    Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press
    September 1, 2004

    Tbilisi Poised for New Conflicts With Rebel Regions


    ABKHAZIA ENDS TALKS WITH TBILISI AFTER GEORGIAN COAST GUARD VESSEL
    FIRES ON TURKISH FREIGHTER IN ABKHAZ WATERS; SYSOYEV: MOSCOW HOPES TO
    USE GEORGIA'S CONFLICTS TO RETAIN ITS INFLUENCE THERE; GIVEN LINKS
    WITH ARMENIA, IT COULD THEN REGAIN CONTROL OF TRANSCAUCASUS, CENTRAL
    ASIA

    SOURCE: GEORGIA IS READY TO TAKE ON EVERYONE. -- Tbilisi Is
    Determined to Recover Remaining Territory. Kommersant, Aug. 2, 2004,
    p. 9. Condensed text:

    (By Vladimir Novikov in Tbilisi and Oleg Zorin [in Moscow]). --
    Georgia is on the verge of war with its former autonomous regions.
    Abkhazia announced on Saturday [July 31] that it was withdrawing from
    all talks with Tbilisi. . . .

    The Abkhaz authorities' announcement that they were pulling out of
    talks with Tbilisi followed an incident that occurred in the
    unrecognized republic's coastal waters. A Georgian coast guard cutter
    patrolling the Abkhaz coast on Saturday spotted a Turkish freighter
    headed for Sukhumi. In an attempt to detain the vessel, the cutter's
    commanding officer ordered the crew to open fire with a large-caliber
    machine gun. The freighter was damaged, but the attempt to detain it
    failed.

    For several years now, Georgia has been demanding that all foreign
    ships calling at Abkhaz ports undergo preliminary inspection in the
    West Georgian port of Poti. Tbilisi maintains that this is necessary
    in order to stop shipments of weapons and narcotics to Abkhazia. Over
    the past several years, dozens of ships flying the Turkish flag, as
    well as the flags of other states, have been detained in Abkhaz
    waters and sent to Poti. Some of them have subsequently been fined
    and released, while others have been seized and sold at auction.
    Until now, this hadn't had any major repercussions.

    But this time officials in Sukhumi responded angrily to Saturday's
    incident. Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba announced that Abkhazia was
    withdrawing from the negotiating process on the grounds that
    Georgia's attack on the freighter was a flagrant violation of the
    1994 cease-fire agreement.

    Tbilisi responded immediately. "The Abkhaz leadership had better
    think long and hard before it withdraws from the negotiating
    process," Georgia's state minister for conflict resolution, Georgy
    Khaindrava, told Kommersant. Mr. Khaindrava said that Sukhumi's
    decision could lead to a complete suspension of the peace process to
    resolve the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

    Officials in Tbilisi maintain that the incident involving the ship
    has nothing to do with the 1994 cease-fire agreement. Georgia's State
    Border Protection Department said that the crew of the patrol vessel
    had acted in accordance with Georgian law and had not violated any
    international agreements. Moreover, the Georgian authorities say they
    will continue their efforts to stop the unmonitored entry of foreign
    ships into Abkhaz ports. So neither Tbilisi nor Sukhumi intends to
    back down.

    The new flare-up in relations between Tbilisi and Abkhazia
    coincides with an escalation of the conflict between the Georgian
    government and the leadership of South Ossetia. There were incidents
    involving the use of weapons in several villages of the unrecognized
    republic early Sunday morning.

    South Ossetian authorities accused Tbilisi of shelling the southern
    part of Tskhinvali with mortars. And Georgian Minister of Internal
    Affairs Irakly Okruashvili reported yesterday that two Georgian
    policemen had been wounded and six South Ossetian residents killed in
    an incident near the village of Prisi. . . . The Georgian internal
    affairs minister issued a warning: "We have no intention of
    tolerating South Ossetia's escapades. Every time the South Ossetians
    open fire, we will fire back."

    Moreover, Irakly Okruashvili said that Georgia has no plans as yet
    to close down its police post in the village of Tamarasheni, which is
    not far from Tskhinvali. The day before, at a meeting of the Joint
    Monitoring Commission for a settlement of the conflict in South
    Ossetia (the meeting was attended by representatives of the
    Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and mediated by
    Russia), Tbilisi and Tskhinvali seemed to have reached an agreement
    whereby Georgian police in the Georgian village of Tamarasheni . . .
    would be replaced with posts manned by the trilateral peacekeeping
    forces -- i.e., by Russian, Georgian and Ossetian peacekeepers.

    But after the commission meeting, the Georgian internal affairs
    minister said he was prepared to order a withdrawal of Georgian
    policemen from Tamarasheni only "if there are guarantees that the
    local Georgian population will be safe." Georgia is demanding a trial
    period to see if the trilateral peacekeeping contingent (in other
    words, the Ossetian and Russian peacekeepers) is in fact neutral. The
    Georgian side is also calling for the establishment of trilateral
    peacekeeping posts in several Ossetian villages on a reciprocal
    basis. Finally, Georgia categorically refuses to dismantle financial
    police checkpoints on the administrative border between South Ossetia
    and other parts of Georgia, citing the need to combat smuggling.

    All of Tbilisi's demands will no doubt be unacceptable to the
    Ossetian and Russian sides. And this is now spawning fears that a
    further escalation of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict could lead to
    another war between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali, one in which Russia would
    inevitably become involved.

    In an interview with Mze Television on Saturday, Georgian Defense
    Minister Georgy Baramidze said, "Georgia is prepared for war and does
    not advise anybody to start one." The minister added that Georgia is
    ready to "respond to any armed provocation, including actions by
    those who represent the Russian side."

    But Kommersant's sources in Tbilisi say that for Georgia, getting
    involved in another armed conflict would not be in the country's best
    interests. The person who would most like to avoid war is President
    Mikhail Saakashvili himself. An armed conflict would cancel out all
    his plans to rebuild the Georgian economy and improve the
    population's standard of living, which was one of the president's
    main campaign promises. What's more, a war in the immediate vicinity
    of the pipelines leading from the Caspian basin to Europe via Georgia
    would hardly be to the West's liking. Finally, no one knows how a war
    might go for Tbilisi, given the powerful Russian backing enjoyed by
    both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Officials in Tbilisi think that war
    in the Transcaucasus would be disadvantageous for Russia as well,
    since it would completely discredit Moscow's peacekeeping efforts.

    So Georgia is not inclined to burn all its bridges. On a visit to
    Kiev in late July, Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, one of President
    Saakashvili's closest associates, said that the "new Georgian
    authorities are trying to achieve something that [former Georgian
    President] Eduard Shevardnadze never could" -- better relations with
    Russia. And in support of that statement, Mr. Zhvania once again
    urged Russia to participate in the privatization of strategic
    facilities in Georgia, such as ports and power stations. The prime
    minister also declared that the Russian military bases [in Georgia]
    are an "anachronism that hampers the development of bilateral
    relations," and proposed the creation of a joint counterterrorism
    center near Tbilisi. According to Kommersant's sources, Georgia is
    prepared to provide the counterterrorism center with not only heavy
    equipment but also aircraft, and to allow several thousand Russian
    soldiers to serve there.

    But Moscow is against linking the establishment of a
    counterterrorism center to the dismantling of its military bases in
    Akhalkalaki and Batumi. Moreover, Russia is demanding that Georgia
    record in a bilateral treaty a pledge by Tbilisi not to allow foreign
    military bases on Georgian territory. But Georgia feels that solving
    the problem in this way would be degrading for a sovereign state and
    is proposing another option -- a statement by the Georgian president
    (at the UN, for example) that no foreign bases would be permitted on
    Georgian territory. . . .

    * * *

    What's at Stake. (By Gennady Sysoyev). -- . . . The current
    conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia involves more than just the
    Georgian authorities fighting the leaders of the self-proclaimed
    republics for control over Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. It is primarily a
    battle for Georgia -- not in the sense of the country's restoring its
    integrity, but in the sense of gaining control over Georgia. And one
    of the main combatants is Russia.

    The prominent American political analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski once
    gave US leaders the following advice: Never let Russia bring Ukraine
    under its influence -- without Kiev, Moscow will never be able to
    regain control over the former Soviet empire. In a certain sense,
    Georgia is now just as important to Russia as Ukraine.

    If it can maintain its influence over Tbilisi, Moscow, given its
    strategic partnership with Armenia, will be able to control more than
    just the Transcaucasus. In such a situation, Central Asia, where the
    US has significantly increased its political and military presence of
    late, is all but bound to eventually return to the orbit of Russian
    influence as well. Because with no alternative to the Russian route
    for exporting their strategic resources to the West (and the
    Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline is primarily meant to provide such
    an alternative), the Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan will
    sooner or later be forced to seek refuge once again under Moscow's
    "umbrella." And with the return of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus
    to the fold, the restoration of the former Soviet empire -- albeit on
    the basis of different principles -- will no longer be such a utopian
    goal for Moscow. On the other hand, if Moscow loses effective levers
    of influence on Tbilisi, this will render Russia's military presence
    in Armenia all but pointless, lead to a weakening of its influence
    throughout the Transcaucasus, and consign the idea of regaining its
    former influence in Central Asia to oblivion once and for all.

    Moscow apparently hopes to maintain its influence in Georgia
    chiefly through the breakaway republics. It allowed President
    Saakashvili to emerge triumphant in the battle for Batumi and was
    counting on reciprocity. For one thing, it expected Tbilisi to drop
    its demands for the removal of the Russian bases on Georgian
    territory. But Mikhail Saakashvili failed to repay his debt to Russia
    for Adzharia; instead, he decided to press for control of South
    Ossetia. If he quickly succeeds, he will substantially reduce
    Russia's ability to bargain over Abkhazia, and Moscow is extremely
    reluctant to let that happen.

    Russia has yet another major stake in the battle for Georgia. If a
    policy of holding on to Tbilisi at any price prevails in Moscow, this
    is bound to be seen by the rest of the world as showing that Russia
    has adopted the imperialist ambitions of the former USSR.
Working...
X