Georgia should not become another Northern Cyprus, minister says
VALENTINA POP
10.10.2008 @ 18:04 CET
EUOBSERVER / TBILISI – Russian troops still remain in some parts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia previously controlled by the Georgian police, moves that will be brought up at the upcoming talks in Geneva, minister for re-integration Temuri Yakobashvili told EUobserver on Friday (10 October).
On the sunny streets of Tbilisi, bordered by impressive plane trees, life seems back to normal after the conflict. "It looks normal, but it's not quite the same," a teenager says when asked about the daily life in the aftermath of the Russian war. The scars are still fresh and visible. Buses still carry English-speaking banners with "Stop the Russian aggression on Georgia," while some bookshops have posters in their windows with the word "Fuck" under Putin's image.
Russian troops still occupy territories that were under Georgian control before the August war (Photo: mid.ru)
Meanwhile, in Gori, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said at a press conference on Friday that Russian troops have "partly" withdrawn from the outposts outside the two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in line with the 10 October deadline contained within the ceasefire agreement, AFP and Reuters report.
The representative of the French EU presidency who brokered the agreement also stressed that the Russians need to withdraw to the positions they held prior to 7 August, including the Akhalgori district in South Ossetia, which used to be under Georgian control before the war.
"Russia should not be granted the feeling that they fulfilled their obligations," minister for re-integration Temuri Yakobashvili said in an interview with EUobserver on Friday, ahead of a meeting with Mr Kouchner in Batumi.
Apart from the Akhalgori district, which was "never under control of the secessionists," Russians also occupied the Kodori corridor in Abkhazia and other parts previously under Georgian control, the minister said.
"We see now the attempts from Russia to fulfill their obligations by some percentage. This should not be tolerated and especially France should not give them a green light on that," Mr Yakobashvili said.
Concerning the upcoming Geneva talks, the minister said: "War criminals should not be invited to those kind of talks," referring to the political leadership of the two secessionist regions. Yet he agreed that there should be discussions with "representatives of the communities" from both sides. "The status of the regions is not negotiable," Mr Yakobashvili said.
"These talks should not be dedicated to interpretations of the agreement, but to the occupation of Georgia, repatriation of refugees and creating durable security conditions for the stability of the Caucasus," he added.
The EU monitoring mission in Georgia (EUMM) is a "good start," according to the minister, though its mission should not be "indefinite," but measured against "benchmarks."
"We are not going to transform the current situation into a Northern Cyprus. Russia is an occupier and should be treated as such at an international level," he stressed.
Northern Cyprus declared its independence in 1983, nine years after a Greek Cypriot coup attempting to annex the island for Greece triggered an invasion by Turkey. The de facto independent republic has received diplomatic recognition only from Turkey, and the conflict has still not been resolved even with the rest of the island joining the EU in 2004.
On the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Mr Yakobashvili stressed that Russia is the only country to have done so, while the Nicaraguan president only verbally did the same he noted, with no formal recognition being voted by the central American country's parliament.
Georgia at a crossroad
Speaking at the opening of the European Resource Bank, a gathering of free-market think tanks, on Thursday evening in Tbilisi, the 37-year-old Georgian prime minister, Lado Gurgenidze, talked of the "dilemma" Georgia faces today.
"Georgia is at a crossroads - if it continues as a young liberal democracy or turn into something fundamentally different, obviously less European, weighed down by its Soviet past, with its Euro-Atlantic aspirations crushed by brutal external force," he said.
"This is the dilemma we face today," Mr Gurgenidze added.
With Russian-Georgian relations still in a deep diplomatic freeze, Mr Yakobashvili told EUobserver that first contacts will be re-established at the Geneva talks next week.
However, in the informal atmosphere of the European Resource Bank opening, Prime Minister Gurgenidze did have a brief chat with a former advisor to Vladimir Putin, Andrei Illarionov, now a staunch critic of his former boss.
