Eurasia Insight:
BOTH MOSCOW AND TBILISI CLAIM UN RESOLUTION A “VICTORY”
Molly Corso: 10/16/06

Both Russia and Georgia have hailed the United Nations Security Council’s October 13 resolution on the Abkhazian conflict zone as a victory for their respective policy positions on Georgia’s right to reclaim the breakaway Black Sea region.

The Russia-sponsored resolution called on the Georgian government to refrain from provocative actions in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, whose separatist government has strong ties to Moscow. It also extended by six months the mandate of United Nations (UN) monitors in the conflict zone, which was due to expire on October 15.

Moscow began pushing for the resolution amidst a recent dispute with Tbilisi over Georgia’s arrest of Russian military officers on espionage charges that led to the evacuation of scores of Russian citizens from Georgia and the recall of the Russian ambassador to Tbilisi for consultations. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Further measures by Russian authorities have included the deportation of Georgians working in Russia, the closure of various Georgian-owned businesses and reported police requests for lists of schoolchildren with Georgian last names. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Responding to the Security Council vote, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated on October 13 that the resolution was “based on fact” and a victory for Russian interests. The resolution “reflected all of Russia’s fundamental suggestions,” Lavrov was quoted by news agencies as saying.

Lavrov argued that the resolution “unambiguously” blames Georgia’s July 2006 police action in the upper part of the Kodori Gorge, a strip of Abkhazian territory still controlled by Georgia, for the current tensions in the conflict zone. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive.] “Now, when the UN Security Council has spoken out, I think that they [the Georgian authorities] will have to follow these requirements,” he said on October 13, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

But Georgia, at least officially, maintains that the resolution is a defeat for Russia and its objections to the pro-Georgian Abkhazian government-in-exile’s presence in the Gorge. In a televised press conference the day of the UN Security Council vote, President Saakashvili noted that the resolution makes “no mention” that Georgia must vacate the part of the Kodori Gorge it controls or remove the “legitimate” Abkhazian government from the area. The government-in-exile moved from Tbilisi to the upper Kodori Gorge in late September.

“[T]here were two most important things that Russian diplomats wanted. The first was the unconditional condemnation of Georgia's operation in the Kodori Gorge, [U]pper Abkhazia. Such a document, although not compulsory for implementation, would have had significant legal force,” he said, according to transcripts from the broadcast on Rustavi-2 television. “This was not supported, and it is a good thing it was not… everyone must understand that not one iota of territory that is already under [Georgian] control - that is one third of Abkhazia's territory - will be handed back to the separatists.”

Saakashvili went on to call on Georgian citizens living abroad to return home to help with the government’s efforts in the upper Kodori Gorge. “Your own country needs you today,” he said. “We have achieved much for the unification of our country. We are preparing for the return of Abkhazia, and we will need our citizens to revive this region.”

De facto Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh has characterized the remarks as “extravagant.” “If the Georgian president has problems with geography, we can remind him that the upper part of Kodori Gorge is Abkhaz territory and it will remain part of Abkhazia,” the Russian television station Novy Mir quoted the separatist leader as saying. On October 12, UN military observers and Russian peacekeepers began monitoring the upper Kodori Gorge again for the first time since 2003.

Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Relations Chief of Staff Vasili Tchkhoidze, however, views the resolution as a sign that [t]he Security Council supports the territorial integrity of Georgia.” The fact that US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton described Washington as “very concerned” about the unresolved conflict in Abkhazia and regretted Russia’s decision to veto an earlier resolution on the conflict “was a reply to Russia’s declarations of victory,” Tchkhoidze said. “[Some] cold water for the Russian authorities.”

Russia rejected an earlier resolution on Georgia after charging that the United States had ammended the document without consultation with Security Council members. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin also took issue with a refusal by the US Embassy in Moscow to grant a visa to Abkhazia’s de facto foreign minister, Sergei Shamba, to travel to New York to address the UN.

Not all Georgian observers, however, share the government’s official interpretation of the resolution. The document’s wording is “nebulous” and includes apparent approval of Russian peacekeepers’ performance, commented Giorgi Khelashvili, a professor of political science at Tbilisi State University. “Georgia failed to achieve a clause in the document concerning the ineffectualness of the Russian troops,” said Khelashvili. “These little changes that are registered now could have long-term implications.”

Others see the resolution as positive because it extends the stay of the United Nations Observer Mission. The fact that the upper Kodori Gorge -- recently renamed Upper Abkhazia by the Georgian government -- is mentioned in the text “four or five times” indicates that the area has become a centerpoint of UN attention regarding the situation in the conflict zone, commented Giorgi Gogua, a Tbilisi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, an international conflict-prevention non-governmental organization.

Editor’s Note: Molly Corso is a reporter and photojournalist based in Tbilisi.