RUSSIA BEGINS MOVING ARMS, EQUIPMENT FROM GEORGIAN BASE OUT OF COUNTRY

Kyiv Post, Ukraine
May 15 2006

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – A train carrying Russian tanks and other arms
and equipment headed toward Georgia’s border on Monday, marking the
start of the withdrawal of Russia’s military bases from the former
Soviet republic under an agreement reached last year.

The train, loaded with equipment removed from the Russian base in the
southern town of Akhalkalaki, which is to be shut by the end of 2007,
was to take its cargo first to Azerbaijan, east of Georgia, and then
north to Russia.

It carried seven T-72 tanks, four armored personnel carriers, eight
combat reconnaissance vehicles, four communications vehicles and
340 cases of artillery shells, said Col. Vladimir Kuparadze, deputy
commander of Russian forces in the Transcaucasus.

Kuparadze said all heavy weapons and vehicles from the Akhalkalaki base
are to be pulled out of Georgia by Oct. 15, including on three more
trains this month and a total of 19 this year. Personnel, firearms
and base property are to be withdrawn and the base closed by the end
of next year, he said.

The other Russian base left over from the Soviet era, in the Black Sea
port of Batumi, is to be withdrawn by the end 2008 under the deal,
which represented a victory for Georgia’s pro-Western President
Mikhail Saakashvili in his effort to reduce Russian influence. The
bases were established in the Soviet era.

Some weaponry and equipment from Akhalkalaki is to be moved to
Russia’s military base in neighboring Armenia – an arrangement that
displeases Armenia’s enemy Azerbaijan. Armenian forces have held
parts of Azerbaijan since a war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave that ended with a shaky cease-fire in 1994.