Senior officials in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
have reacted with skepticism to Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili's November 23 pledge
not to resort to military force to bring those regions back under the control of the Georgian central government.
The
Russian Foreign Ministry
has said it will give credence to Saakashvili's assurances only after
they are committed to paper and thus acquire legal force. Meanwhile,
the Abkhaz authorities have launched an apparent new bid to reassure
and win the trust of the breakaway region's Georgian community.
Commenting on Saakashvili's speech to the European Parliament, de facto Abkhaz Foreign Minister Maksim Gvinjia
recalled
that "over the past 18 years Georgia has never once demonstrated
positive intentions with regard to Abkhazia." For that reason, Gvinjia
said, "for us, Saakashvili's statement does not constitute a signal
that Georgia is ready to embark on a peace dialogue with us."
Abkhaz
President Sergei Bagapsh for his part said categorically that "we do
not believe" Saakashvili. He recalled, as did Gvinjia's
South Ossetian counterpart Murat Dzhioyev,
that Saakashvili had publicly pledged not to attack Abkhazia and South
Ossetia on the eve of what Bagapsh called "Georgia's barbaric
aggression" against South Ossetia in August 2008.
Both Bagapsh
and Dzhioyev reasoned that if Saakashvili is serious, he should sign
separate legally binding agreements with the two entities on the nonuse
of force. The two breakaway regions have
raised that issue repeatedly
at successive sessions of the ongoing talks in Geneva jointly mediated
by the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, and the European Union. Georgia has consistently said it is
willing to sign an agreement with Russia on the nonuse of force, but
not with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it does not consider
independent actors.
While the Geneva talks have failed to make
substantive progress on resolving either humanitarian or security
issues, the lower-level confidence-building and incident-prevention
talks held under the aegis of the UN in Abkhazia's southernmost Gali
district have proven more successful. Abkhaz citizen Garri Jopua, who
was detained in early October, reportedly by Georgian security
personnel ,after inadvertently straying on to the territory of Georgia
proper,
was released one month later after the Abkhaz side formally sought the assistance of the Gali mediators in determining his whereabouts.
A
UN press release said the most recent Gali meeting, on November 25,
included "a useful exchange of information...with respect to the
freedom of movement of local residents." It said "all participants
engaged constructively" in that discussion.
Parallel talks involving the de facto South Ossetian leadership
resumed
in late October after a long hiatus. The South Ossetians had suspended
their participation in January to protest what they termed Tbilisi's
refusal to provide information about South Ossetians believed to be
held in Georgian custody.
Meanwhile, the Abkhaz authorities have
launched a new initiative to address the fears and grievances of the
overwhelmingly Georgian population of Gali. De facto Prime Minister
Aleksandr Ankvab
traveled to Gali
on November 24, where he met with 18 local people, including the wife
of David Sigua, a local government official who disappeared,
apparently abducted by Georgian security personnel, in February 2007.
Bezhan
Ubiria, elected from a Gali constituency to the Abkhaz National
Assembly, told Ankvab the population's most pressing concerns included
obtaining Abkhaz passports and the induction of young Georgian men into
the Abkhaz Army.
http://www.rferl.org/content/abkhazia_south_ossetia_dismiss_saakashvili/2232987.html
