Sukhum - President Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia's trip on May 20 to Moscow, capital of Russia, to make his first official contact with the newly appointed administration of Russia was cast a shadow over by a claim of Russian daily Kommersant that Bagapsh will have negotiations with Russian officials over a peace agreement with Georgia. <O:P></O:P>

Sergei Shamba, Foreign Minister of Abkhazia, rejected Kommersant's claim and said with stress that Bagapsh would be in Russia to have meetings with Russian officials over what to do to improve the relations between his country and Russia. Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia, ordered that the Russian administration should make efforts to improve its relations with Abkhazia while he was holding his position as President.<O:P></O:P>

Shamba also said that Bagapsh would meet with Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia, to discuss how to establish 'institutional' relations between the two countries. "The president will only be in Moscow to discuss what can be done to put into effect the order that Putin gave while he was the president," said Shamba to reject Kommersant's claim that Bagapsh would be in Moscow to seek approval from Russian officials for a peace accord between Georgia and Abkhazia.<O:P></O:P>

According to Kommersant, Irakli Alasanya, Georgia's permanent representative at the United Nations, or UN, offered a wide-scale peace accord to the Abkhazian administration when he made a trip to Sukhum last week. The peace accord proposed that a non-agression agreement should be signed between the two countries in exchange for permission to be granted to Georgian refugees to return home who left Abkhazia during the war in 1992 and 1993. It also proposed that Georgian forces should withdraw from Upper Kodor. Bagapsh then defied rumors that Sukhum approached Tbilisi to sign a peace accord. "Abkhazia will never compromise its ideal of full independence," said Bagapsh. "We can only be willing to negotiate if Georgia withdraws from Kodor." (Agency Caucasus)