Diplomats say second Saakashvili-Medvedev meeting in works
By Mikheil Svanidze
Tuesday, June 24
Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze flew to Moscow where he spoke with Russian counterpart Grigory Karasin.
In a brief press release, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said the officials discussed “a broad spectrum of bilateral relations, including the situation in Abkhazia, Georgia.”
Vashadze said the meeting would also serve to lay the groundwork for a future meeting of the Georgian and Russian presidents.
“The [presidents’] meeting should be prepared thoroughly. We have [a responsibility] to not [merely] hold another protocol meeting,” he told Georgian journalists in Moscow. “The most important thing is that the presidents should achieve concrete results.”
The presidents’ first meeting after Dmitry Medvedev’s election was this month in St Petersburg, on the sidelines of a Commonwealth of Independent States summit in the first week of June.
Parliamentary Speaker Davit Bakradze said there will be three specific demands at the next meeting: the withdrawal of “illegal” Russian troops like paratroopers and military engineers from breakaway Abkhazia, where Moscow reinforced its peacekeeping contingent this spring; a change to the increasingly formalized relations between the Kremlin and the separatist regime in Abkhazia; and the start of a “real process” of conflict resolution.
“We are prepared for fruitful dialogue with specific proposals on how to begin conflict resolution and we are expecting similar understanding from Russia,” Bakradze told reporters yesterday.
Since the first meeting of presidents, tensions have only escalated. The most recent incident was when Georgian forces briefly detained Russian peacekeepers just south of the administrative border with Abkhazia, confiscating dozens of anti-tank missiles they were transporting to a checkpoint in Zugdidi district.
In an interview given to Georgian online publication Presa.ge, influential MP Givi Targamadze, chair of the parliamentary defense and security committee, said the weaponry was intended to be used for an attack against Georgia.
“Arrival of those kinds of weapons at the Zugdidi checkpoint means that preparations for military operations are underway. They [Russians] are preparing for military actions and not only in Abkhazia, but also in Zugdidi district and, it seems, other districts,” Targamadze said.
But Vashadze, the deputy foreign minister, said before his meeting with Karasin that the incident would not figure highly in the talks.
“This is not a major issue in our relations. Most important is to settle the problems of principle, and then this particular issue will be solved,” Vashadze said.