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By Mark John
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russia’s deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war “very close”, a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday.
Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the “foreign minister” of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia.
“We literally have to avert war,” Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels.
Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: “Very close, because we know Russians very well.”
“We know what the signals are when you see propaganda waged against Georgia. We see Russian troops entering our territories on the basis of false information,” he said.
At a banking event in Madrid, Vice Finance Minister Dimitri Gvindadze said the Georgian economy was holding up despite the tensions. However ratings agency Fitch said a conflict would likely hit Georgia’s ratings but not immediately Russia’s.
“Obviously if we have an unfreezing of the conflict that will be extremely negative for the country (Georgia) and would lead to negative ratings action,” Fitch’s Edward Parker told Reuters in London.
Georgia, a vital energy transit route in the Caucasus region, has angered Russia, its former Soviet master with which it shares a land border, by seeking NATO membership.
Russia has said its troop build-up is needed to counter what it says are Georgian plans to attack Abkhazia, a sliver of land by the Black Sea, and has accused Tbilisi of trying to suck the West into a war — allegations Georgia rejects.
Tensions have been steadily mounting and escalated after Georgia accused Russia of shooting down one of its drones over Abkhazia in April, a claim Russia denied.
An extra Russian contingent began arriving in Abkhazia last week. Moscow has not said how many troops would be added but said the total would remain within the 3,000 limit allowed under a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in 1994. Diplomats expect the reinforcement to be of the order of 1,200.
SECURITY GUARANTEES
Russian soldiers acting as peacekeepers patrol areas between Georgian and Abkhazian forces but handing full military control of the breakaway province to the Kremlin would alarm both the Georgian government and its allies in the West.
“Those 200 km (120 miles), the distance between the Psou and the Inguri rivers, are all Abkhazia. We agree to Russia taking this territory under its military control,” Sergei Shamba, “foreign minister” of Abkhazia, told Russian newspaper Izvestia.
“In exchange, we will demand guarantees of our security.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow had not received an official request from Abkhazia for its military to take control of the region.
Iakobashvili urged EU states to take a more active role in the region, with options including the deployment of border monitors or a police mission.
Diplomats said EU President Slovenia was studying sending a delegation at the level of state secretaries to Georgia as a gesture of solidarity, but a number of ex-communist EU states were insisting it should be a full-fledged ministerial visit.
Could it Spark a Larger War?
From “The Week Daily”
“It’s tough to pay attention to wars that haven’t yet broken out in places we can’t even spell,” said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial (free registration), but we should care that Abkhazia is “perilously close” to open warfare. Russia is trying to keep Georgia out of NATO, and its attempts to provoke Georgia into a NATO-ending invasion “have been nothing short of outrageous.” But Georgia “is fighting dirty as well,” putting a hold on Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The U.S. wants Georgia in NATO and Russia in the WTO, but it only has sway over Georgia.
This might be a good time to rethink our support of Georgia’s NATO bid, said Matthew Yglesias in The Altantic, at least until it comes to “some kind of stable resolution” of its problems in Abkhazia and fellow breakaway region South Ossetia. It isn’t wise to extend NATO’s “absolute security guarantees to a country in Georgia’s position unless there’s some overwhelming strategic rationale for doing so,” and “just to be nice” doesn’t cut it.
With or without formal NATO membership, said Anne Applebaum in Slate, “the West will have to come up with a major response” if Russia invades Georgia. Georgia is “an emerging democracy” with troops in Iraq, and it has “many implicit assurances of security” from the U.S. and NATO. This is worrisome. World War I had a similarly obscure start, and trouble in Abkhazia could “become the starting point of a larger war.”
It certainly could, said Alexander Golts in The Moscow Times, but not because Russia or Georgia actually wants “this conflict to escalate toward a military conflict.” Both sides have political and strategic reasons to provoke the other, but they are playing a dangerous game of brinksmanship. The two sides’ “aggressive” posturing could sharply escalate out of control, like at the start of World War I, and that could have “tragic consequences for the entire world.”
Shoushi was liberated without the approval of Armenia.
YEREVAN (Combined Sources)–The heroic liberation of Shoushi, a turning point in the Karabakh Self-Defense movement, was organized and carried out without the approval of Armenia’s senior leadership, Karabakh War Veteran Arkady Ter-Tadeveosian told a press conference on Tuesday.
A veteran of the Karabakh Liberation mopvement, Ter-Tadevosian, also known by his comrades as “Comandos,” organized and executed the liberation of Shoushi from Azeri occupation.
But Armenia’s leadership at the time didn’t believe that the liberation of Shoushi would be possible, he explained. Outnumbered, outgunned and at a tactical disadvantage, Armenian freedom fighters under Ter-Tadevosian’s command were charged with the duty of attacking an impregnable fortress.
