Georgian Daily, Georgia
July 26 2009
Georgia Moves To Alienate South Ossetia, Abkhazia Further
July 26, 2009
The working group on territorial integrity and local self-government,
one of nine created within the framework of the 70-member commission
set up to draft amendments to the Georgian Constitution, proposed on
July 22 dropping from the reworked constitution the designation "South
Ossetia" in favor of "Tskhinvali region," Caucasus Press reported.
That region will have unspecified "special status" with "an
unspecified degree of autonomy," according to working group chairman
Kakhi Kurashvili. Abkhazia and Adjara will be designated autonomous
republics within Georgia with the right to adopt their own
constitutions — a right that South Ossetia apparently will not
share. In all, Georgia will comprise 13 territorial units.
The working group’s proposal is comparable with the decision taken in
November 1990, in violation of a pre-election pledge by then-Georgian
parliament chairman Zviad Gamsakhurdia to abolish South Ossetia’s
status as an autonomous oblast within Georgia. It was that reversal by
Gamsakhurdia that triggered fighting between informal Ossetian and
Georgian militias in early 1991 that culminated in Tbilisi’s ultimate
loss of control over South Ossetia in 1992.
The successive peace proposals for Abkhazia and/or South Ossetia
unveiled by President Mikheil Saakashvili in September 2004, January
2005, and July 2005, and by then-Georgian Prime Minister Zurab
Noghaideli in October 2005, all offered only "broad autonomy" to the
two breakaway republics, and for that reason were immediately and
unconditionally rejected. Russia formally recognized both Abkhazia and
South Ossetia as independent states in August 2008; the only other
country to follow suit was Nicaragua.
The very term "autonomy" in the post-Soviet context is anathema
because Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics and Autonomous Oblasts
within the framework of the USSR did not in practice have any leeway
in taking even the most minor decisions. It was this perceived
inequality that gave rise to the mass anti-Georgian protests in
Abkhazia in the spring of 1978, and to the demand in February 1988 by
the oblast soviet of the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast for
the region’s transfer from Azerbaijani jurisdiction to the Armenian
SSR.
In his July 23 address to the Georgian parliament, U.S. Vice President
Joe Biden called on lawmakers "to keep the doors open to the Abkhaz
and South Ossetians, so that they know they have other options besides
the status quo," however difficult such overtures might be. He further
urged parliamentarians to build "a peaceful and prosperous Georgia
that has the prospect of restoring your territorial integrity by
showing those in Abkhazia and South Ossetia a Georgia where they can
be free and their communities can flourish; where they can enjoy
autonomy within a federal system of government, where life can be so
much better for them than it is now."
Commenting on that exhortation the following day, Georgian Minister
for Reintegration Issues Temur Yakobashvili told journalists that any
decision on a federal structure should be delayed until after the
"de-occupation" of Georgian territory, meaning the withdrawal from
Abkhazia and South Ossetia of the Russian troops currently stationed
there and the two republics’ re-subordination to the central Georgian
government.