Moscow accuses Georgia of fueling conflict ahead of Rice visit
By Mikheil Svanidze and Winston Featherly
Thursday, July 10
“The actions of Tbilisi pose a real threat to peace and security in the Southern Caucasus and could place the region on the brink of new armed conflict with unpredictable consequences,” said a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement.
Russia’s envoy to the UN took a draft resolution to the UN Security Council yesterday which called on Georgia to sign a non-use of violence pact with its breakaway regions.
“There is an increasing amount of the confirmatory evidence that Georgia’s leadership has taken the path of deliberately fanning tension…to destroy the [Russian-led] peacekeeping architecture [in the conflict zones],” the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
Moscow also suggested Washington officials intend to “shield the provocateurs and blame Moscow for everything.”
Temur Iakobashvili, the top Tbilisi official for conflict issues, said it is not Georgia that is the aggressor in the recent spate of violence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia: “It became evident now, who is a provocateur, who is striving for war and who intends to carry out military operation,” Iakobashvili told reporters yesterday.
“If we look at the chronology of the events, it becomes evident who is to blame,” said Shota Malashkhia, chair of a parliamentary committee on conflict issues. “[Russia] pointing a finger towards Georgia is not only immoral, but also unjust.”
Georgian leaders say Russia is bent on controlling secessionist Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where Moscow has deployed military engineers to patch up railways and moved to formalize links with the separatist authorities.
“[Russia is] not even recognizing these territories, it’s absorbing these territories into the Russian Federation—which is called annexation,” said Giga Bokeria, the influential deputy foreign minister, in an interview earlier this year.
Tensions are at a high this month after a series of bombings and targeted attacks in the conflict zones left more than half a dozen dead.
Yesterday the Interior Ministry said its police killed four Abkhaz militiamen in a Georgian-controlled gorge in Abkhazia after they came under attack. Abkhaz authorities say they were attacked by a Georgian military force.
Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said this week they are “very concerned about [the] deteriorating situation” in the region.
The violence preceded US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s arrival in Tbilisi yesterday evening. She is to meet with Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili today.
Rice came from Prague, where she angered Moscow by signing a missile defense system agreement with the Czech Republic and blaming Russia for escalating tension in Georgia.
“Georgia is an independent state. It has to be treated like one,” Rice said on her way to the Czech capital. “But frankly, some of the things that Russia did over the last couple of months added to tensions in the region.”