Thursday, March 29, 2007

Georgia: Tbilisi Ups The Ante Over South Ossetia

By Liz Fuller

March 29, 2007 (RFE/RL) — The Georgian leadership has announced at
least three successive proposals since September 2004 for resolving
its conflictwith the breakaway unrecognized republic of South Ossetia.

All have been rejected.

Now, Tbilisi is seeking the backing of the international community to
establish a pro-Georgian interim administration in South Ossetia in a
bid to sideline the de facto administration of Eduard Kokoity, the
republican president whom Tbilisi regards as a Russian puppet.

Frozen Approach

Meanwhile, the EU was scheduled on March 27 to discuss a new plan that
advocates diverging approaches to expediting a solution to the frozen
conflicts in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Under former President Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian leadership
concentrated its energy on seeking, first through Russian mediation
and then with the assistance of the so-called Friends of the UN
Secretary-General group of countries (France, Germany, the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Russia) a solution of the Abkhaz
conflict that would enable the estimated 200,000 or more Georgians who
fled the region during the 1992-93 fighting to return to their homes.

The conflict with South Ossetia, by contrast, was kept on the back
burner. After the Rose Revolution in November 2003 and the ouster six
months laterof Aslan Abashidze, the autocratic ruler of Ajara,
however, Tbilisi began focusing in earnest on South Ossetia.

An attempt in the summer of 2004 to bring the region back under
Tbilisi’s control by force of arms backfired badly, costing the lives
of several dozen Georgian Interior Ministry troops and precipitating
the dismissal of Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili, himself a
native of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

Addressing the UN General Assembly on September 21, 2004, just weeks
after the botched Georgian military intervention, President Mikheil
Saakashvili outlined a three-stage plan for resolving the twin
conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

That plan entailed confidence-building measures; the demilitarization
of the conflict zones — to be followed by OSCE monitoring of the Roki
tunnel linking South Ossetia and Russia, and the deployment of UN
observers alongthe border between Abkhazia and Russia; and the
granting to the two regions of"the fullest and broadest form of
autonomy." This, according to Saakashvili, would protect the Abkhaz
and Ossetian languages and cultures, and guarantee self governance,
fiscal control, and "meaningful representation and power-sharing" at
the national level. Both unrecognized republics rejected that offer
outof hand.

Four months later, in January 2005, President Saakashvili unveiled a
revised and expanded peace plan for South Ossetia during an address to
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The full text of
Saakashvili’s plan was posted on his website
() in late March 2005.

It comprised "a constitutional guarantee of autonomy, which includes
the right to freely and directly elected local self governance –
including an executive branch and a parliament for South
Ossetia. South Ossetia=80=99s parliament will…control…issues such
as culture, education, social policy, economic policy, public order,
the organization of local self governance, and environmental
protection."

South Ossetia would also, Saakashvili said, have representatives in
the national government, parliament, and judiciary. He further said
Tbilisi was ready to discuss with the South Ossetian leadership
"innovative ideas," including free economic zones, and to permit that
leadership to tailor its economic policies to local needs.

Transition Period

Saakashvili proposed a three-year transition period during which a
mixed Georgian-Ossetian police force would be set up under the
guidance of international organizations, and the South Ossetian
military would be absorbed into the Georgian armed forces.

He appealed to the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the European Union,
the United States, and Russia to support and facilitate the peace
process. But Kokoity again dismissed Saakashvili’s offer. Kokoity said
he was ready for dialogue with Tbilisi "on equal terms," and to expand
economic cooperation with Georgia, but he added that South Ossetia
does not need Georgian humanitarian aid.

Saakashvili’s refloated the revised version of his original peace
proposal at a conference in Batumi in July 2005 on conflict resolution
to which Kokoity claimed he was not invited.

Then, in October 2005, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli
outlined to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna yet another rewrite
of Saakashvili’s peace proposal.

Just how it differed from earlier drafts is not clear, but Russian
Foreign Minister spokesman Mikhail Kamynin criticized it as inferior
to the proposal that Saakashvili unveiled to the UN General Assembly
in September 2004.

Kokoity responded in December 2005 by floating a three-stage peace
proposal of his own, which the Georgian authorities initially
lauded. But efforts to convene a meeting between Kokoity and
Noghaideli to discuss details failed.

Meanwhile, Georgia launched a parallel two-track campaign to have the
Russian peacekeeping contingent deployed in the South Ossetian
conflict zone withdrawn, and to bring U.S. and EU representatives into
the ongoing talkson resolving the conflict conducted under the
auspices of the Joint Control Commission (JCC).

That body comprises government representatives from Russia, Georgia,
South Ossetia, and the Republic of North Ossetia, which is a subject
of the Russian Federation. OSCE representatives also regularly attend
JCC meetings.

Dueling Elections

No progress was registered toward resolving the conflict in 2006. In
November 2006, Kokoity was reelected for a second term as de facto
president with 96 percent of the vote.

The same day, however, the Georgian electorate of South Ossetia
participated in a parallel ballot in which they elected their own de
facto president, Dmitry Sanakoyev. Sanakoyev served as defense
minister and then as prime minister for several months in 2001 under
Kokoity’s predecessor, Lyudvig Chibirov, but left South Ossetia for
Moscow after Kokoity came to power.

The international community did not acknowledge the election of either
Kokoity or Sanakoyev as legal and valid. But that did not deter
Saakashvili from announcing in his annual address to parliament in
mid-March that he intends to embark on "peace talks" with Sanakoyev,
who has established a parallel government based in the village of
Kurta.

The pro-Saakashvili Rustavi-2 television channel on March 26 quoted
Saakashvili as saying he plans to set up a "temporary administrative
unit"in South Ossetia that would oversee the economy and social
services, help maintain law and order, and participate in talks on the
region’s future status within Georgia.

If those talks reach a conclusion, Saakashvili continued, "real
elections" will be held throughout South Ossetia. He added that within
days, the Georgian government will ask parliament to draft the
appropriate legislation on the temporary government.

In an interview published on March 26 in "The Georgian Times,"
Sanakoyev outlined his own vision of South Ossetia’s future. He
reaffirmed his commitment to resolving the conflict peacefully, but at
the same time said Kokoity has no options other than resigning or risk
being deposed.

Alternative Choice

Sanakoyev admitted that neither he nor the administration he heads is
regarded as legitimate, but said he thinks that will change given that
"wehave managed to create an alternative to the Kokoity authorities
who are leading the Ossetian people into an abyss."

He said his administration hopes for economic ties with Russia,
especially neighboring North Ossetia, and that "we are going to
develop our economy onthe basis of raw materials" in light of the
region’s untapped hydroelectric capacity.

In one key respect, however, Sanakoyev’s plans appear to diverge from,
and go far beyond, what Tbilisi is offering: he said he wants "federal
relations," which Tbilisi has consistently rejected in the case of
both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. (The Georgian Constitution defines
Georgia as "an independent, unified, and indivisible state.")

And, while Sanakoyev expressed "understanding" for Tbilisi’s
unhappiness with the JCC as a format for talks, he said he still
believes that commission "has great potential for [promoting]
reconciliation and disarmament."

Meanwhile in Brussels, Ambassador Peter Semneby, the EU’s special
representative for the South Caucasus, has overseen the drafting of a
landmark 60-page blueprint for resolving both the Abkhaz and South
Ossetian conflicts. T

hat plan advocates diverging approaches to the two regions, in tacit
acknowledgment of the very real differences between the leaders of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

While the former are widely regarded by international diplomats and
experts as opportunistic, entirely subservient to Moscow, and mired in
dubious, possibly even criminal economic activities, the latter are
seen as politically sophisticated and desperately seeking the backing
of the international community to lessen their dependence on Moscow —
currently their sole ally — and broaden their leeway in ongoing
UN-mediated talks with Tbilisi.

In line with that perception, what RFE/RL’s Georgian Service on March
22 dubbed the "Semneby plan" seeks to persuade the Abkhaz of the
economic and social benefits of reaching an accommodation with
Tbilisi.

It also envisages establishing new customs structures to put an end to
smuggling across the borders of both republics and, in South Ossetia,
policing the porous border with North Ossetia to preclude the shipment
of Russian weaponry to the South Ossetian military, according to a
March 20 analysis on euobserver.com.