RUSSIAN MILITARY HARDWARE QUITS GEORGIA IN BASE CLOSURE
Agence France Presse — English
May 15, 2006 Monday 9:39 AM GMT
A special train began transporting Russian tanks and other military
hardware from Georgia Monday in line with an agreement to shut down
Moscow’s last military bases in the strategic ex-Soviet republic.
The train carried tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other
vehicles from the Akhalkalaki military base in southern Georgia,
an AFP reporter at the scene said.
To reach Russia, on the other side of the Caucasus mountains range,
the train must first wind east through Georgia’s neighbour Azerbaijan,
the deputy commander of Russia’s forces in Georgia, Vladimir Kuparadze,
said.
The base “will be completely closed by the end of the year. A part
of the equipment will be delivered to the Gyumri base in Armenia”,
Kuparadze told AFP.
Under the agreement reached in May last year, Russia is also closing
another base at Batumi, on the Black Sea coast, with the closure due
for completion in 2008.
The deal resolved a long-standing source of tension between Georgia
and Russia, with the government in Tbilisi accusing Moscow of using
the military presence to undermine the country’s independence.
Under a 1999 agreement, Russia is also supposed to have already closed
another military base, the Gudauta base, in the province of Abkhazia.
However, the region is ruled by pro-Russian separatists and Georgia’s
government says it has not been able to verify the closure.
Relations between the two countries have worsened since Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in 2004 vowing closer
integration with the West and promising to take his country into the
Western-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
Georgia has become a strategic battleground as the West sees it as an
important route for westward exports of oil and gas from Central Asia.
The closure of the base at Akhalkalaki has prompted objections from
local residents concerned that they will incur economic losses as
a result.