NEWS BRIEFS
12/14/09
Print this article
Email this article
The Georgian government condemned breakaway Abkhazia’s December 12 presidential election as invalid, but the Georgian official in charge of relations with Sukhumi indicated that Tbilisi is nevertheless relatively content with the outcome.
State Minister for Territorial Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili told reporters on December 14 that incumbent Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh is not only the most convenient candidate for Abkhazia’s patron, Moscow, but is also the least unacceptable for Tbilisi. "Hopefully, he will also prove in some form to be comfortable with dealing with" the Georgian government, Iakobashvili said.
Bagapsh’s wife is ethnic Georgian, a fact that spurred optimism in 2004 when he was first elected president of Abkhazia; however, there have been no indications since then that Bagapsh has Tbilisi-friendly inclinations.
Bagapsh easily outpaced his competitors in the December 12 election to secure a second five-year term. Tbilisi, which does not recognize Abkhazia’s independence, claimed that hundreds of Georgians were disenfranchised in the election.
Posted December 14, 2009 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org
|
The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website,
meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed
debate about the social, political and economic
developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
It is a program of the Open Society
Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New
York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation
that promotes the development of open societies around
the world by supporting educational, social, and legal
reform, and by encouraging alternative
approaches to complex and controversial issues.
The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily
represent the position of the Open Society Institute and
are the sole responsibility of the author or
authors.
|
|
Get RSS Feed
