A week before she comes to Tbilisi, the European Union’s chief diplomat, Catherine Ashton, announced that Brussels is looking to assist Georgia's Action Plan for Engagement, a fence-mending scheme for ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia recently tabled by the Georgian authorities.
The gist of the plan is to diversify the money-earning options for residents of both breakaway regions, while offering their populations the same social welfare and civil rights available in Georgian-controlled territory. The plan dodges the fact that the de facto governments of both regions consider themselves to be running independent countries; Tbilisi has no control over either territory. Rather, the ongoing argument about the regions’ status would be set aside to focus on "common grassroots initiatives." Grants would be offered to the breakaway regions through a so-called trust fund run by an international organization, while a “Joint Investment Fund” would help bring in business investment. A common economic space is meant to help exchange goods and services with neighboring populations in Georgian-controlled territories. An international humanitarian organization would coordinate the project via offices in Sokhumi, Tbilisi and Tskhinvali.
The plan also proposes a status-blind identification document that would be recognized by all three sides for travel between the territories; a so-called Neutral Travel Document is proposed for travel abroad. Most residents of both regions now carry Russian passports.
The plan conspicuously makes no mention of Russia, which has recognized both regions as independent countries and keeps both under protective cover. Although Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently called for direct talks between Tbilisi and the two regions, it is doubtful that he had in mind the kind of contact proposed by the Action Plan.
Many eyes in Azerbaijan had been focused on US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in hopes that she would take President Ilham Aliyev’s government to task for allegedly gagging free speech. But after Clinton offered only a measured reproach, one Baku court took matters still further.
Three days after Clinton's July 4 visit, the court convicted a jailed newspaper editor on fresh charges. In a move condemned by various international rights groups, Eynulla Fatullayev was found guilty of drug possession -- a ruling that extended his eight-and-a-half-year prison term by another two and a half years. The decision came three months after the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg requested the journalist's release.
Fatullayev, the onetime editor of the now defunct Realny Azerbaijan newspaper, has been convicted of everything from terrorism and slander to tax evasion and, now, drug possession.
Journalism and rights advocacy groups assert that the charges are the price for Fatullayev's criticism of the Azerbaijani authorities.
Clinton’s office on July 7 issued a statement in response to the fresh jail term, but don't look for fireworks. Pledging Washington's readiness "to assist" Azerbaijan with "the necessary reforms for democratic and economic progress," the statement only noted that the conviction "is not a step in the right direction."
Khvichava lives in a tiny village in West Georgia together with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and supposedly does not look a day over 100.
Georgia has long enjoyed a reputation for longevity, but Khvichava’s claim brings to mind an old Georgian joke.
A centenarian mountain man complains to a doctor that he has not been feeling well recently. The doctor smiles charitably and says that the man is about to kick the bucket. “This is going to be devastating for my dad,” the man sighs.
“Dad?!” the doctor exclaims. “For Christ’s sake, how old is he?”
“Just turned 130,” the white-bearded man says, and adds, shaking his head, “If I die now, he will have to postpone his wedding."
The doctor jumps from his chair and shouts: “He is getting married at such an age?”
The man responds with a gesture: “I know, my dad does not really want to get married again, but his parents insist.”
Still struggling to plug the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, British Petroleum is looking to drill new holes in the Caspian Sea. BP Chief Executive Tony Heyward travelled to hydrocarbon-rich Azerbaijan on July 6 to meet with President Ilham Aliyev and oversee the signing of a deal with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR) on prospecting for and developing natural gas finds in the offshore Shafag and Asiman fields.
The signing dispelled speculations that Heyward’s visit to Azerbaijan had to do with BP’s efforts to shed some assets to cover its $3.12 billion battle with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said earlier that it would be happy to purchase BP’s business in Azerbaijan; in particular, its stake in the major Shah Deniz field.
“America is America, Georgia is Georgia, [South] Ossetia is [South] Ossetia,” Putin observed. “It is not necessary to rely on somebody and expect manna from heaven."
Tbilisi was quick to respond that Moscow is trying to pass the buck to the breakaway authorities while continuing to occupy Georgia’s territories. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria termed the statement "a cheap attempt to skirt responsibility." Parliamentary Speaker Davit Bakradze defined an "occupation" as "the responsibility of that power which occupies."
The post-Clinton visit exchange shows that Tbilisi and Moscow are back to square -- or, rather, triangle -- one: Tbilisi continues to rely on the US to keep Russia out, while Moscow continues to push for Tbilisi to keep Washington out.
Call it palm-tree diplomacy. Abkhazia’s de facto president, Sergei Bagapsh, is bound for Venezuela, Nicaragua and may swing by Cuba later in July to deepen ties between the Caribbean countries and the onetime fun-under-the-sun capital of the Soviet Union.
With his Abkhaz passport, though, Bagapsh can only travel to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia and the South Pacific island of Nauru. The rest of the world still regards Abkhazia as part of Georgia.
Casting an apparent eye at recent US comments that spoke of Russia's "occupation" of the breakaway territory, Bagapsh said that neither the US nor the European Union can succeed in tearing Abkhazia away from its Russian protector. That relationship was forged not out of "considerations of the moment," he argued, but by Abkhazia "following its heart."
“Whether the Americans come to want it or not, nobody will tear anybody away from anybody,” Bagapsh declared.
On the eve of US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's whistle-stop July 4-5 tour of the South Caucasus, an American civil rights watchdog has issued a report that indicates that democratic reform is going nowhere in Armenia and Georgia, and is in reverse in Azerbaijan.
Freedom House's Nations In Transit 2010 report, which gauges democratic progress in former Soviet bloc countries on a scale from one to seven, says that Georgia and Armenia have made no democratic strides for the past two years, while Azerbaijani democracy, never in good health, has deteriorated further. Georgia and Armenia scores remained unchanged at 4.93 and 5.39, while Azerbaijan’s annual score slipped 0.25 down to 6.50.
Rowdy 2008 elections and limited input by NGOs on policy formulation dogged both Armenia and Georgia, while provisions for an extended presidential term, a crackdown on new media and civil society has further worsened the situation in Azerbaijan, the report found.
Armenia’s first president has taken his fight with the country's second president about the controversial 2008 election of Armenia's third president to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The court has agreed to review the complaint by Levon Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress against Ter-Petrosian’s successor, former President Robert Kocharian.
The multi-pronged suit, billed “Armenian Citizens versus Robert Kocharian,” mainly focuses on ANC accusations against Kocharian for his handling of the deadly March 2008 violence that followed the election of current President Serzh Sargsyan. The 4,500-page suit, which includes reams of testimonies, video and audio evidence, was sent to The Hague some three weeks ago.
It is unclear, however, whether the International Criminal Court will launch a trial about the case. Armenia is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court; hence, critics say the complaint has little more than PR value. The ANC, though, seems to hope that the scale of the case would still warrant a full trial.
Two subsidiaries of Russian Railroad placed bids to construct the 400-kilometer line, a job with an estimated cost of anywhere from $1.7 billion to $4 billion. The terrain is mountainous, making it difficult and cost-consuming to clear the roadbed, but Yerevan says the link will offer a vital gateway for Armenia's exports.
The furthest Armenians can now travel by train is to the Georgian Black Sea port city of Batumi. The dispute over the breakaway region of Abkhazia and the Nagorno-Karabakh War long ago put paid to railway connections to Russia.
After completing a feasibility study, Tehran said it will pay its own money to build the Iranian section of the railroad and will co-sponsor the Armenian section.
While reporters were still on a scavenger hunt for Joseph Stalin’s grand statue in his Georgian hometown of Gori, a smaller and lesser known monument of the Soviet dictator was removed from its pedestal in a smaller and lesser known Georgian town.
Far removed from the controversy that surrounded the towering Stalin monument down the road in Gori, the dictator's monument in the western mining town of Tkibuli, further west, had managed to escape the limelight. When Georgia broke away from the USSR, the Tkibuli monument was removed, but reinstalled later. Now, sometime during the night of June 26/27, it was removed again, Vesti.ru reported.
The big Stalin is expected to reappear in Gori’s museum on the Soviet leader, but the fate of the smaller Stalin is still unknown.
A character from the Georgian film "Repentance," a cult movie shot in the dying days of the Soviet Union, repeatedly exhumes the body of her family's tormentor, a dictatorial mayor styled after Adolf Hitler, Stalin and KGB boss Lavrenty Beria. Similarly, many in Georgia have long thought that Stalin’s bronze presence helped perpetuate the Soviet mentality.
The question remains whether by removing the Stalin statue(s) Georgians will be able to forget that past.
