RIA Novosti, Russia
March 30, 2005
BAGAPSH AGAINST OPENING OF ADDITIONAL UN OFFICES IN ABKHAZIA
SUKHUMI, March 30 (RIA Novosti’s Ruslan Tarba) – One UN human rights
office is sufficient in Abkhazia (self-proclaimed republic in
Georgia), Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh told journalists on
Wednesday.
According to him, “our country is small and we do not need UN offices
in every village.”
The UN human rights office is open in Sukhumi and this is enough to
control the human rights observation in the republic, he noted.
The Abkhaz leadership is ready to discuss with the Georgian side
nothing but mutually beneficial economic projects on the basis of
Sochi agreements.
The Sochi agreements signed in March 2002 imply the restoration of
railway traffic via Abkhazia, Georgia and Armenia, the restoration
and development of the Inguri hydroelectric power plant and the
return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia’s Galsky district.
“Other issues are out of the question,” Bagapsh said.
“The political status of the Republic of Abkhazia is not to be
discussed,” he emphasized. Sergei Bagapsh met with journalists ahead
of the Georgian-Abkhaz meeting in Geneva scheduled for April 7-8. A
group of friends of the UN Secretary General will attend the meeting.
According to Bagapsh, no talks will be held and no documents will be
signed in Geneva.
Speaking about the return of Georgian refugees, the president said
they could return only to the Galsky district. “People who fought
against our country cannot and will not live here,” he stressed.
The armed conflict in the 1990s broke out in the early 1990s when
Georgia deprived Abkhazia of the autonomous status and used tough
punitive measures against the republic, which declared independence
in response. The CIS peacekeeping forces consisting of Russian
servicemen were deployed in the Abkhaz-Georgia conflict zone in June
1994.