20 May 2005, Volume  8, Number  17

GEORGIAN PARLIAMENT SPEARHEADS CAMPAIGN FOR CLOSURE OF RUSSIAN MILITARY
 
BASES. If -- and it is a very large "if" -- Russia and Georgia finally reach a consensus at their talks in Tbilisi on 23 May on the final timeframe for the closure of Russia's two remaining military bases in Georgia, the Georgian parliament will be in a position to claim much of the credit. Conversely, the legislature will also risk being branded responsible if such an agreement again proves elusive.

Since agreeing at the November 1999 OSCE summit in Istanbul to close two of its four military bases in Georgia by mid-2001, the Russian leadership gradually and grudgingly, under pressure from the international community and successive Georgian leaderships, reduced the time it claims is needed to close the two remaining bases -- in Batumi and Akhalkalaki -- from 15 years, which Georgia rejected (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 27 December 2000) to eight years (see "RFE/RL Caucasus Report," 3 January 2003). In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Tbilisi for talks with his Georgian counterpart Salome Zourabichvili that, it was hoped, would yield a compromise agreement acceptable to both sides. When neither side proved willing to modify its position, it was agreed to establish working groups in the hope of ironing out all remaining differences by mid-May (see "RFE/RL Caucasus Report," 11 March 2005).

At that juncture, the Georgian parliament upped the ante by adopting a nonbinding resolution calling on the Georgian government to declare the two Russian bases illegal if the two sides failed by 15 May to reach a firm agreement that the Russians would leave Georgia by the end of the year. The chairmen of the parliament's committees on defense and security and foreign relations subsequently hinted that they would present Moscow with a bill of several hundred million U.S. dollars for unpaid land tax and utilities supplied over the past decade. The Russian State Duma retaliated by accusing its Georgian counterpart of blackmail.

The Georgian Constitution does not clearly define which branch of government has ultimate responsibility for foreign policy. According to Article 48, "The parliament of Georgia shall be the supreme representative body of the country, which shall...determine the principle directions of domestic and foreign policy," while Article 69 (2) affirms that "the president of Georgia shall lead and exercise the internal and foreign policy of the state." But in recent months it has been the parliament that has sought to pressure not only Moscow but the Georgian Foreign Ministry to reach an agreement on the swiftest possible departure of the Russian military contingent. On the one hand, the sometimes intemperate rhetoric resorted to by Georgian legislators risked triggering a major crisis in bilateral relations. But on the other hand, Moscow's aggressive and threatening response to those Georgian demands served to heighten the awareness of the international community of the need to resolve the problem. That awareness has been reflected in countless statements by foreign leaders in talks in recent months with both Russian and Georgian officials, and culminated in the 13 May resolution passed by the U.S. Senate insisting that Moscow comply with its obligations to withdraw the two bases from Georgia.

Despite the war of words between the Georgian parliament and the Duma, and trenchant statements from Russian military officials including Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, the two sides' positions are now apparently very close. Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okrushavili said earlier this week that Tbilisi "might" agree to a deadline of mid-2008 for completion of the Russian withdrawal, while Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Yakovenko said it could hypothetically be completed by the end of that year. That prediction is, however, at odds with the position of the Russian Army General Staff, which is sticking fast to the argument that a minimum of four years is required to complete the withdrawal, meaning it would be completed some point in 2009. That 2009 deadline is, moreover, contingent on the transfer of part of the Russian personnel and materiel currently deployed in Georgia to Armenia, according to Chief of General Staff General Yurii Baluevskii as quoted by Interfax on 19 May. Azerbaijan has already threatened to protest that redeployment, according to Caucasus Press on 20 May. (Liz Fuller)
http://www.rferl.org/reports/caucasus-report/