Abkhazia blasts injure six

Two blasts in an Abkhazian resort town injured six people yesterday, according to officials in the breakaway region.

Georgian and Abkhaz officials swapped accusations over the apparent attack, which capped a weekend of speculation on a supposed Georgian proposal to divide the separatist enclave into zones of influence.

“Georgia is behind these terrorist acts,” the de facto president of the breakaway region, Sergey Bagapsh, told Russian reporters.

The explosions are “another provocation,” Georgian MP Nika Rurua, deputy chair of parliament’s defense and security committee, told reporters. He called the blasts a “primitive plan, supported by Russian special services,” to portray the Georgian state as a violent enemy.

Bagapsh, the Abkhaz leader, said the blasts were meant to scare off Russian tourists at the start of the summer season. Gagra, where the explosions occurred, is a little sea town near the Russian border and once a prime tourist destination.

There were no Russian nationals among the injured, according to Russian news reports.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict in the early 1990s, Gagra, like other Abkhazian resorts, grew desperate to draw in as many Russian tourists as possible.

“Russian tourist and businessmen are vital for us; Russian business makes up almost 100 percent of all investments in Abkhazia,” Bagapsh, the Abkhaz leader, told Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview published last year.

Moscow encouraged its businessmen to invest in the breakaway region by withdrawing from economic sanctions on Abkhazia this spring, and announcing a boost to “economic and humanitarian” relations between Russia and Abkhazia.

Tbilisi has strenuously protested the bolstered ties between its breakaway region and northern neighbour, to little effect so far.

But last week, the influential Russian newspaper Kommersant ran an article claiming that Georgia has a secret plan for resolving the conflict which would include abandoning its NATO membership ambitions.

Officials in both countries and Abkhazia denied the report.

Tbilisi proposed dividing Abkhazia into two zones of influence, according to Kommersant: the northern part, including most of the resorts and the capital Sokhumi, under “Russian influence;” and a smaller zone of Georgian influence in the south.

The entire region would nominally return to Georgian state control in the alleged deal. Georgia would give up its bid for NATO membership, which Moscow intensely opposes, and leave Russian businesses free to pursue profits in northern Abkhazia.

“That will be beneficial for all the parties in the conflict,” Kommersant wrote on June 27, citing anonymous Russian and Georgian officials. “Saakashvili will announce the return of Abkhazia, Abkhazians [in] losing a small part of their land will get factual independence, and Russia will get Georgia refusing to join NATO as well as the freedom to economically utilize Abkhazia.”

Russian, Georgian and Abkhaz leaders denied the report as “absurd” and “groundless.”

In a follow-up article published yesterday, Kommersant, quoted Georgian Ambassador to Russia Erosi Kitsmarishvili denying the existence of the plan but saying “Georgia and Russia are now conducting quiet negotiations, the details of which should be confidential.”

Earlier this year, Kommersant reported another alleged deal to swap the return of Georgian refugees to Abkhazia in exchange for the withdrawal of Georgian forces from Kodori Gorge, a sliver of the separatist region now controlled by the state. Georgian and Abkhaz officials denied that report too, and no such deal has been put into motion.

Nearly 300 000 people left Abkhazia during the conflict there, according to a UN report, and the supposed partition plan would leave most of them unable to return to their former homes.

Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, speaking to reporters yesterday, said the only plan being discussed now is one President Mikheil Saakashvili introduced in March. It would give Abkhazia “unlimited autonomy” within the Georgian state, and the right of return to refugees.

Abkhaz leaders say they will not consider anything short of full independence for the self-declared republic.