President of separatist Georgian region sworn in
Associated Press Worldstream
February 12, 2005 Saturday 7:46 AM Eastern Time
SUKHUMI, Georgia — At his inauguration Saturday, the new president
of Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region called for closer integration
with Russia and pledged to work for international recognition of the
separatist province as an independent state.
The inauguration of Sergei Bagapsh followed a drawn-out struggle for
control of the Black Sea province, which was paralyzed after a disputed
Oct. 3 election pitting him against ex-prime minister Raul Khadzhimba,
who had Russia’s tacit support. They agreed in Russian-brokered talks
to team up in a new vote last month, with Bagapsh heading the ticket
and Khadzhimba running for vice president.
“Integration with Russia will always be the main issue for me and
for the entire leadership of Abkhazia,” Bagapsh, who has worked to
dispel concerns that he would take a softer line than his predecessor
on relations with Georgia’s central government, said at the ceremony.
He stressed the need to develop a “strategic union with Russia”
and harmonize the region’s legislation with Russian laws.
Abkhazia has run its own affairs since 1993, when separatists drove
out Georgian government troops, and has cultivated close ties with
Russia. No government recognizes it as independent, but many of its
residents – including Bagapsh – have Russian citizenship, and Georgian
authorities accuse Russia of supporting its separatist leadership.
“There is no Abkhazia yet on the political map of the world,
Georgian-Abkhazian relations have not been settled, but with our
domestic success in all areas, we will prove to the world our right to
build an independent state,” Bagapsh said. He said Abkhazia is eager
to cooperate with “all interested states, on the condition that they
respect its sovereignty.”
Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili has pledged to reunite his
fractured country by bringing Abkhazia and another separatist region,
South Ossetia, into the fold. His offers of broad autonomy within
Georgia have met with rejection.
South Ossetia’s separatist leader Eduard Kokoity attended the
inauguration, as did representatives of two other unrecognized states
on the former Soviet fringes, Nagorno-Karabakh and Trans-Dniester.
Russian lawmakers and the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region,
which borders Abkhazia, were also among the guests.