REBEL GEORGIAN REGIONS SEEKING STATEHOOD
by David Cutler

Reuters
Aug 25 2008
UK

Aug 25 (Reuters) – Both chambers of Russia’s parliament urged President
Dmitry Medvedev on Monday to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions
of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Here are key facts about the two Georgian regions bidding to join
the ranks of the world’s smallest independent states:

SOUTH OSSETIA:

* South Ossetia, about 100 km (60 miles) north of the Georgian capital
Tbilisi, broke away from Georgia in a 1991-92 war that killed several
thousand people. It has close ties with the neighbouring Russian
region of North Ossetia.

* The majority of the roughly 70,000 people living in South Ossetia
are ethnically distinct from Georgians. They say they were forcibly
absorbed into Georgia under Soviet rule and now want to exercise
their right to self-determination.

* A 500-strong peacekeeping force from Russia, Georgia and North
Ossetia monitors a 1992 truce. Tbilisi accuses Russian peacekeepers
of siding with separatists, something Moscow denies. Sporadic clashes
between separatist and Georgian forces have killed dozens of people
in the last few years.

* Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has proposed a peace deal
under which South Ossetia would be given "a large degree of autonomy"
within a federal state. The separatist leaders say they want full
independence.

* The separatist leader is Eduard Kokoity. In November 2006, villages
inside South Ossetia which are still under Georgian control elected
a rival leader, ex-separatist Dmitry Sanakoyev. He is endorsed by
Tbilisi, but his authority only extends to a small part of the region.

ABKHAZIA:

* A Black Sea region bordering Russia, Abkhazia was once the favourite
holiday destination of the Soviet Union’s elite. It accounts for
about half of Georgia’s coastline.

* It fought a war in the early 1990s to drive out Georgian forces. The
conflict killed an estimated 10,000 people and forced hundreds of
thousands to leave their homes.

* Georgia, a former Soviet state, says just under 250,000 people —
most of them ethnic Georgians — were driven out by the conflict and
are now registered as internally displaced. Abkhazia’s separatist
authorities dispute this, saying there are no more than 160,000
internally displaced people.

* Russia can deploy up to 3,000 peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia under
a 1994 ceasefire agreement. Georgia complained the Russian troops were
effectively propping up the separatists. Moscow said their presence
was preventing more bloodshed.

* Abkhazia’s separatist administration says the region’s population
is 340,000. Tbilisi says that is artificially inflated.

* The Abkhaz people are ethnically distinct from Georgians. They
say they were forcibly absorbed into Georgia under Soviet rule and
now want to exercise their right to self-determination. Separatist
officials say over 80 percent of residents in Abkhazia have been
issued with Russian passports.

* According to the International Crisis Group think tank, a Soviet
census in 1989 showed ethnic Abkhaz accounted for 18 percent of the
region’s population, ethnic Georgians 45 percent and other groups,
mostly Russians and Armenians, the rest.

* Starting in the late 1990s, some ethnic Georgians began returning
to their homes in Abkhazia’s Gali district, near the de facto border
with Georgia. About 50,000 people have returned to the district.