Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
July 22, 2005, Friday

ETHNIC CLASHES TAKE PLACE IN THE ARMENIAN-POPULATED DISTRICT OF
SAMTSKHE-JAVAKHETI, GEORGIA

Ethnic clashes were reported in the Armenian-populated district of
Samtskhe-Javakheti, Georgia, last week-end. Fifteen or so drunken
Armenians raided and wrecked a Georgian school in Akhalkalaki.
Proceedings were instituted; nobody has been detained as yet.

In the settlement of Samsa the locals kicked up a fight with students
from Tbilisi on a monuments of architecture restoration mission. The
police evacuated the beaten students, some of them right to the
nearest hospital.

Mels Torosjan, one of the chairmen of the Akhalkalaki political
movement Virk, denies “political undertones”.

The region is viewed as potentially problematic because its
population is apprehensive of the forthcoming withdrawal of the 62nd
Russian Military Base from Akhalkalaki. The locals fear that the
Russians’ place will be taken by the Turks (Turkey is a NATO member).
The Russian military spends a lot of cash in Akhalkalaki paying for
food and fuel and this is probably the only source of income for the
locals. Almost every third serviceman of the base is a local Armenian
who applied for and obtained Russian citizenship.

Georgian political scientist Paata Zakareishvili is convinced that
the political leadership should be more attentive to the problems of
the “Armenian region” because “there are lots of forces there waiting
for a chance to provoke new incidents.” Still, the Armenians are
skeptical about the authorities’ promises to solve their social
problems and not to deploy foreign troops when the Russians are out.
Local politicians began talking of forming autonomy back in the
middle of the 1990’s. These speculations died out eventually, thanks
to a considerable extent to official Yerevan’s requests to Georgian
Armenians not to kick up quarrels with Tbilisi.

Source: Vremya Novostei, July 19, 2005, p. 5

Translated by A. Ignatkin