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Poor results in Geneva

By Messenger Staff
Monday, November 16
The 8th round of negotiations in Geneva on Security issues in Caucasus has ended with practically no results being achieved, like the others. After 8 hours of negotiations no consensus was achieved on any subject.

The Georgian side demanded the deployment of international police forces on the occupied territories and the safe return of refugees to their places of original dwelling and the return of their properties. Neither of these things were achieved. Neither was a protocol on the non-use of force agreed or discussed. The Russians and separatists said that they did not know the contents of this agreement and asked for an additional two months to get acquainted with it, so it was decided that the next, ninth, round of Geneva talks would be held on January 28, 2010.

It must be mentioned that the agreement on the non-use of force is the key issue in these negotiations. Georgia is prepared to sign such an agreement provided that the signatories are only Georgia and Russia. The latter as an aggressor, which occupies 20% of the territory of its neighboring country, and Georgia is this victim of this aggression, says official Tbilisi and international law as well. However The Kremlin wants the non-use force agreement to be signed between Georgia and Abkhazia and Georgia and South Ossetia. The Kremlin has insisted on this at the last four rounds of negotiations, but this is absolutely unacceptable for Tbilisi it would mean effectively recognising the breakaway territories as equally sovereign entities.

No Georgian administration will ever agree to such an arrangement. Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Gigi Bokeria, head of the Georgian delegation at the talks, has stated this loudly. He also stated that Georgia has fulfilled all the commitments it made when signing the Sarkozy-Medvedev agreement whereas Russia has not fulfilled the most important paragraph of this as it has not returned its forces to the locations prior to August 7, 2008. It is clear that Moscow does not want to abide by the Sarkozy-Medvedev agreement and is trying to impose on the world its so-called new reality, in which its two puppet regimes are “independent and sovereign states”. However everyone more or less familiar with international legislation acknowledges that these are Russian occupied territories and Russian puppet administrations rule them. Only two countries receiving some benefit from Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have recognised the independence of these puppet states, with even countries dependent on Russian energy and trade links refusing to do so.

Unfortunately international institutions such as the EU and UN have not been able to influence Moscow. The Kremlin vetoed the presence of UN monitors in Abkhazia at the Security Council session and the Kremlin also ignores completely any decisions made by the EU, which it is not a member of. It is a member of the Council of Europe, but is ignoring that organisation’s resolutions too and has even declared it will leave if it does not get what it wants. People may talk about Russia going into international isolation, but at present that seems a perfectly pleasant place to be, and one where you don’t have to bother with pesky irritants like Geneva negotiations.