No quick solution to Russian-Georgian crisis

Saturday, July 19, 2008
GALI, Georgia: Abkhazias separatists on Friday rejected a three-stage plan presented by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to end a conflict between Georgia and its breakaway province.

Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, and the region of South Ossetia both broke away from Georgia after wars in early 1990s. Bringing them back is the priority task of Tbilisis pro-Western government.

Western governments worry the conflict over Abkhazia could spiral into war and destabilise the broader Caucasus region, a key energy link from the Caspian Sea to Europe, bypassing Russia.

The three stages of Steinmeiers plan include returning Georgian refugees to Abkhazia, organising economic recovery programmes in the province and deciding its future status.

ôThese proposals are not acceptable to us,ö separatist leader Sergei Bagapsh told reporters after talks with Steinmeier in the town of Gali on the de facto border between Abkhazia and Georgia.

Abkhazias separatist authorities rule out returning to the de jure border and Georgian rule under any conditions.

ôWe are not going to discuss Abkhazias status,ö Bagapsh said. ôAbkhazia is an independent state.ö

ôBoth sides positions are far from each other, and we need to create the conditions for a dialogue,ö Steinmeier told reporters after talks with Bagapsh.

The German foreign minister will travel on Friday to Moscow for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Meanwhile, Western diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions between Georgia and Russia may not yield immediate results, but they have already changed matters by depriving Russia of exclusive control of the situation, analysts said.

Europe and the United States initiated their attempts to end the dangerous dispute over Georgias breakaway region of Abkhazia ôas tensions reached an extremely high temperature,ö Archil Gegeshidze, a political analyst at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP.

ôThe EU and the United States seek a stable and democratic Georgiaö with its oil and gas pipelines connecting the Caspian Sea to Turkey and its strategic location in the eastern edge of the European continent, he added.

As for Russia, which has grown more assertive in recent years, restoring influence in the South Caucasus is largely seen by its political elite as an ôexistential issue,ö Gegeshidze said. The row over Abkhazia and another separatist Georgian region, South Ossetia, is at the heart of increasingly bitter relations between Moscow and Tbilisi, amid Russias broader offensive against Western influence in its former Soviet backyard. The increase in tensions has helped Moscow impede its neighbours bid for membership in the Nato military alliance.

But now the region has seen a flurry of Western diplomatic activity, including visits by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

ôThe Western factor has irreversibly changed the status quo around Georgias conflict regions. With the West entering the Caucasus game, Russia is not the first violin there anymore,ö Alexei Malashenko, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, told AFP. Although the self-proclaimed governments of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from Tbilisi in the early 1990s, are not formally recognised by any state, Russia tacitly supports the separatists and maintains peacekeeping troops in the two regions.

Tensions mounted further this month with a series of bombings in Abkhazia, which the Abkhaz leadership blamed on Georgia, and Moscows admission that it had sent military jets on flights over South Ossetia. The incidents raised memories of the two regions separatist wars in the early 1990s, which killed several thousand people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

ôIn light of the escalation in the last weeks and months, we all have a common duty to help defuse the situation,ö German Foreign Minister Steinmeier said on Friday after meeting Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh during a two-day visit to the region.

ôThe West is giving Georgia a chance to resolve the crisis through a sophisticated diplomatic game,ö Tornike Sharashenidze, an analyst at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, told AFP.

ôGeorgia now has to demonstrate its ability to follow this process with patience. Otherwise it risks losing Western support,ö he said. The first Western bid to end the crisis received a cool response on Thursday as Georgia rejected key elements of a three-stage conflict resolution plan proposed by Germany. Abkhazia rejected the plan on Friday.

The German plan includes the signing of a legally binding document committing both sides to refrain from the use of force and allow around 250,000 displaced Georgians to return to Abkhazia.

Those steps would be followed by economic aid to the region, with Berlin organising a donors conference, and finally a political solution. Steinmeiers plan ôwas just a first attempt at finding a way out of crisis. Only long-term efforts with the participation of all parties involved may lead to mutual concessions,ö Sergei Mikheyev, the vice president of the Moscow-based Centre for Political Technologies, told AFP.

ôRussia needs guarantees for its interests in the region. In the case such guarantees are provided, it may agreeö to cooperate with the West on conflict resolution in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, he added. Malashenko said that ôits extremely difficult, but still possible to find a formula for conflict resolution that would be convenient for all parties,ö adding that it would take ôvery careful diplomatic workö. ôAny harsh moves may lead to fatal consequences,ö he added.