baku Today

Eurasia

Secessionist leaders in former Soviet regions to strengthen ties

AFP 19/03/2005 00:49

MOSCOW, March 18 (AFP) – Four breakaway regions in former Soviet republics
plan to conclude a mutual support pact, one of their leaders said Friday.

“We intend to reach a mutual support agreement,” Sergei Bagapsh, leader of
Georgia’s rebellious Abkhazia region, was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS
news agency during a visit to Moscow.

Bagapsh said he would soon meet with his counterparts Eduard Kokoity of
South Ossetia (Georgia), Arkady Gukasyan of Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan),
and Igor Smirnov of Transdniestr (Moldova).

The Russian media has suggested the leaders of the four regions met secretly
here on Wednesday and would do so again in April in the Abkhazian town of
Sukhumi.

Moscow has been accused of encouraging the two Georgian secession movements,
and has supplied peacekeepers after they beat back troops from Tbilisi in
wars after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russian troops intervened to stop fighting that broke out in Transdniestr in
1992, and have never left.

Fighting also broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in
Azerbaijan, as the Soviet Union was collapsing. It has remained in Armenian
hands since a 1994 ceasefire.

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