Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press
September 1, 2004
Tbilisi Poised for New Conflicts With Rebel Regions
ABKHAZIA ENDS TALKS WITH TBILISI AFTER GEORGIAN COAST GUARD VESSEL
FIRES ON TURKISH FREIGHTER IN ABKHAZ WATERS; SYSOYEV: MOSCOW HOPES TO
USE GEORGIA’S CONFLICTS TO RETAIN ITS INFLUENCE THERE; GIVEN LINKS
WITH ARMENIA, IT COULD THEN REGAIN CONTROL OF TRANSCAUCASUS, CENTRAL
ASIA
SOURCE: GEORGIA IS READY TO TAKE ON EVERYONE. — Tbilisi Is
Determined to Recover Remaining Territory. Kommersant, Aug. 2, 2004,
p. 9. Condensed text:
(By Vladimir Novikov in Tbilisi and Oleg Zorin [in Moscow]). —
Georgia is on the verge of war with its former autonomous regions.
Abkhazia announced on Saturday [July 31] that it was withdrawing from
all talks with Tbilisi. . . .
The Abkhaz authorities’ announcement that they were pulling out of
talks with Tbilisi followed an incident that occurred in the
unrecognized republic’s coastal waters. A Georgian coast guard cutter
patrolling the Abkhaz coast on Saturday spotted a Turkish freighter
headed for Sukhumi. In an attempt to detain the vessel, the cutter’s
commanding officer ordered the crew to open fire with a large-caliber
machine gun. The freighter was damaged, but the attempt to detain it
failed.
For several years now, Georgia has been demanding that all foreign
ships calling at Abkhaz ports undergo preliminary inspection in the
West Georgian port of Poti. Tbilisi maintains that this is necessary
in order to stop shipments of weapons and narcotics to Abkhazia. Over
the past several years, dozens of ships flying the Turkish flag, as
well as the flags of other states, have been detained in Abkhaz
waters and sent to Poti. Some of them have subsequently been fined
and released, while others have been seized and sold at auction.
Until now, this hadn’t had any major repercussions.
But this time officials in Sukhumi responded angrily to Saturday’s
incident. Prime Minister Raul Khadzhimba announced that Abkhazia was
withdrawing from the negotiating process on the grounds that
Georgia’s attack on the freighter was a flagrant violation of the
1994 cease-fire agreement.
Tbilisi responded immediately. “The Abkhaz leadership had better
think long and hard before it withdraws from the negotiating
process,” Georgia’s state minister for conflict resolution, Georgy
Khaindrava, told Kommersant. Mr. Khaindrava said that Sukhumi’s
decision could lead to a complete suspension of the peace process to
resolve the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.
Officials in Tbilisi maintain that the incident involving the ship
has nothing to do with the 1994 cease-fire agreement. Georgia’s State
Border Protection Department said that the crew of the patrol vessel
had acted in accordance with Georgian law and had not violated any
international agreements. Moreover, the Georgian authorities say they
will continue their efforts to stop the unmonitored entry of foreign
ships into Abkhaz ports. So neither Tbilisi nor Sukhumi intends to
back down.
The new flare-up in relations between Tbilisi and Abkhazia
coincides with an escalation of the conflict between the Georgian
government and the leadership of South Ossetia. There were incidents
involving the use of weapons in several villages of the unrecognized
republic early Sunday morning.
South Ossetian authorities accused Tbilisi of shelling the southern
part of Tskhinvali with mortars. And Georgian Minister of Internal
Affairs Irakly Okruashvili reported yesterday that two Georgian
policemen had been wounded and six South Ossetian residents killed in
an incident near the village of Prisi. . . . The Georgian internal
affairs minister issued a warning: “We have no intention of
tolerating South Ossetia’s escapades. Every time the South Ossetians
open fire, we will fire back.”
Moreover, Irakly Okruashvili said that Georgia has no plans as yet
to close down its police post in the village of Tamarasheni, which is
not far from Tskhinvali. The day before, at a meeting of the Joint
Monitoring Commission for a settlement of the conflict in South
Ossetia (the meeting was attended by representatives of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and mediated by
Russia), Tbilisi and Tskhinvali seemed to have reached an agreement
whereby Georgian police in the Georgian village of Tamarasheni . . .
would be replaced with posts manned by the trilateral peacekeeping
forces — i.e., by Russian, Georgian and Ossetian peacekeepers.
But after the commission meeting, the Georgian internal affairs
minister said he was prepared to order a withdrawal of Georgian
policemen from Tamarasheni only “if there are guarantees that the
local Georgian population will be safe.” Georgia is demanding a trial
period to see if the trilateral peacekeeping contingent (in other
words, the Ossetian and Russian peacekeepers) is in fact neutral. The
Georgian side is also calling for the establishment of trilateral
peacekeeping posts in several Ossetian villages on a reciprocal
basis. Finally, Georgia categorically refuses to dismantle financial
police checkpoints on the administrative border between South Ossetia
and other parts of Georgia, citing the need to combat smuggling.
All of Tbilisi’s demands will no doubt be unacceptable to the
Ossetian and Russian sides. And this is now spawning fears that a
further escalation of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict could lead to
another war between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali, one in which Russia would
inevitably become involved.
In an interview with Mze Television on Saturday, Georgian Defense
Minister Georgy Baramidze said, “Georgia is prepared for war and does
not advise anybody to start one.” The minister added that Georgia is
ready to “respond to any armed provocation, including actions by
those who represent the Russian side.”
But Kommersant’s sources in Tbilisi say that for Georgia, getting
involved in another armed conflict would not be in the country’s best
interests. The person who would most like to avoid war is President
Mikhail Saakashvili himself. An armed conflict would cancel out all
his plans to rebuild the Georgian economy and improve the
population’s standard of living, which was one of the president’s
main campaign promises. What’s more, a war in the immediate vicinity
of the pipelines leading from the Caspian basin to Europe via Georgia
would hardly be to the West’s liking. Finally, no one knows how a war
might go for Tbilisi, given the powerful Russian backing enjoyed by
both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Officials in Tbilisi think that war
in the Transcaucasus would be disadvantageous for Russia as well,
since it would completely discredit Moscow’s peacekeeping efforts.
So Georgia is not inclined to burn all its bridges. On a visit to
Kiev in late July, Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, one of President
Saakashvili’s closest associates, said that the “new Georgian
authorities are trying to achieve something that [former Georgian
President] Eduard Shevardnadze never could” — better relations with
Russia. And in support of that statement, Mr. Zhvania once again
urged Russia to participate in the privatization of strategic
facilities in Georgia, such as ports and power stations. The prime
minister also declared that the Russian military bases [in Georgia]
are an “anachronism that hampers the development of bilateral
relations,” and proposed the creation of a joint counterterrorism
center near Tbilisi. According to Kommersant’s sources, Georgia is
prepared to provide the counterterrorism center with not only heavy
equipment but also aircraft, and to allow several thousand Russian
soldiers to serve there.
But Moscow is against linking the establishment of a
counterterrorism center to the dismantling of its military bases in
Akhalkalaki and Batumi. Moreover, Russia is demanding that Georgia
record in a bilateral treaty a pledge by Tbilisi not to allow foreign
military bases on Georgian territory. But Georgia feels that solving
the problem in this way would be degrading for a sovereign state and
is proposing another option — a statement by the Georgian president
(at the UN, for example) that no foreign bases would be permitted on
Georgian territory. . . .
* * *
What’s at Stake. (By Gennady Sysoyev). — . . . The current
conflict over Abkhazia and South Ossetia involves more than just the
Georgian authorities fighting the leaders of the self-proclaimed
republics for control over Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. It is primarily a
battle for Georgia — not in the sense of the country’s restoring its
integrity, but in the sense of gaining control over Georgia. And one
of the main combatants is Russia.
The prominent American political analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski once
gave US leaders the following advice: Never let Russia bring Ukraine
under its influence — without Kiev, Moscow will never be able to
regain control over the former Soviet empire. In a certain sense,
Georgia is now just as important to Russia as Ukraine.
If it can maintain its influence over Tbilisi, Moscow, given its
strategic partnership with Armenia, will be able to control more than
just the Transcaucasus. In such a situation, Central Asia, where the
US has significantly increased its political and military presence of
late, is all but bound to eventually return to the orbit of Russian
influence as well. Because with no alternative to the Russian route
for exporting their strategic resources to the West (and the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline is primarily meant to provide such
an alternative), the Central Asian republics and Azerbaijan will
sooner or later be forced to seek refuge once again under Moscow’s
“umbrella.” And with the return of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus
to the fold, the restoration of the former Soviet empire — albeit on
the basis of different principles — will no longer be such a utopian
goal for Moscow. On the other hand, if Moscow loses effective levers
of influence on Tbilisi, this will render Russia’s military presence
in Armenia all but pointless, lead to a weakening of its influence
throughout the Transcaucasus, and consign the idea of regaining its
former influence in Central Asia to oblivion once and for all.
Moscow apparently hopes to maintain its influence in Georgia
chiefly through the breakaway republics. It allowed President
Saakashvili to emerge triumphant in the battle for Batumi and was
counting on reciprocity. For one thing, it expected Tbilisi to drop
its demands for the removal of the Russian bases on Georgian
territory. But Mikhail Saakashvili failed to repay his debt to Russia
for Adzharia; instead, he decided to press for control of South
Ossetia. If he quickly succeeds, he will substantially reduce
Russia’s ability to bargain over Abkhazia, and Moscow is extremely
reluctant to let that happen.
Russia has yet another major stake in the battle for Georgia. If a
policy of holding on to Tbilisi at any price prevails in Moscow, this
is bound to be seen by the rest of the world as showing that Russia
has adopted the imperialist ambitions of the former USSR.