News Wrap-up

TBILISI, Georgia -- Sorry for the silence over the past few days. Here are a few recent headlines on the area.

This weekend Spain's Foreign Minister endorsed NATO membership for Georgia. During the same trip, Spain announced it would be opening an embassy in Tbilisi. Spain takes over the EU's rotating presidency in 2010.

No one can understand the present conflict between Georgia and its breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, without understanding the role of the country's first post-Soviet president, extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The poet-turned-politician helped the set Tbilisi and its separatist regions on a path of conflict. Although it must be noted that Gamsakhurdia had negotiated a power-sharing agreement with Abkhazia which Eduard Shevarnadze helped undermine in his bid for power in 1992. (Poets just don't make good politicians, people.)

Self-declared independent Abkhazia is struggling to create its own identity apart from Russia.

Iran has gained from conflict in Georgia, which has made Iranian pipelines more attractive to Capsian Basin energy producers, such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Zeyno Baran, a regional analyst at the Hudson Institute, told me she estimates the US and Europe have maybe a year to get serious about starting real pipeline projects to bring Caspian Basin energy to the market before Russia -- and perhaps Iran -- have locked it up.

The war in Georgia has unleashed a rush of new patriotism in Russia. But has eroded respect for Russia in the West.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asked the Duma yesterday to ratify friendship treaties signed with the de facto governments in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The treaties provide for Russian military bases on the two regions' territory. Russia and Nicaragua recognized the two areas, which declared independence after the war in August.

The Kremlin has appointed a Russian ambassador to Abkhazia, Simon Grigoliev.

US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said yesterday that Russia did not fully comply with the ceasefire agreement. He said it has not withdrawn its forces to pre-war lines, which the agreement stipulated.

Fried also said Georgia has to strengthen its democracy.

On that note, some in the opposition have called for a one-day rally outside parliament on Nov. 7, the one-year anniversary of mass pro-democracy demonstrations last year. Those demonstrations were broken up by police in riot gear.

Geneva talks break down

TBILISI, Georgia -- Talks in Geneva about the future of Georgia's two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, ended on Wednesday almost as soon as they began.

A European Union official said the talks were being delayed until Nov. 18 because of "procedural difficulties."

Russia tried to change the format of the talks several times before they began, said Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili. "It was definitely not a helpful approach."

Many experts feared that Russia would exploit divisions among European Union members and prevent any substantive resolution.

The talks already suffered a setback Tuesday when they were downgraded to consultations rather than formal negotiations.

The difficulty was finding a way for representatives from South Ossetia and Abkhazia to participate acceptable to both Moscow and Tbilisi. Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war in August over the provinces.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia delegates were allowed to sit on working groups but not as official representatives of their de facto governments. That was apparently not sufficient for Moscow.

The discussions were called for under cease-fire agreements brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union (EU). The organization is co-hosting the Geneva talks along with the United Nations and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

EU members are divided over whether Russia has complied with cease-fire agreement's withdrawal requirements, which call for "the full withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces from the zones adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia to pre-conflict lines." Russian forces left zones adjacent to the provinces but have not returned to pre-conflict lines.

Georgia wants "the full withdrawal of Russian occupiers from Georgia, the return of all refugees and the restoration of Georgia's integrity to its internationally recognized borders," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told Interfax News Agency.

Zeyno Baran, director of the Hudson Institute´s Center for Eurasian Policy in Washington, expects Russia to drag out negotiations.

"If the talks are ongoing, it allows Russia to keep what it has established on the ground. And what they have on the ground benefits them," she said in a telephone interview.

Russia also benefits because the European Union has not responded to the crisis with a unified front.

"Since the war, Germany, France and Italy are all a lot more eager to get back to business as usual, and to see this Georgia business go away," Ms. Baran said. Each country stands to benefit from continuing lucrative bilateral energy and business projects with Russia.

At the same time, Sweden, Poland, the United Kingdom and Baltic states have demanded that Russia fully comply with the cease-fire agreement.

Russia's strongest weapon in Europe is energy. It supplies 50 percent of Europe's natural gas and 30 percent of its oil, which gives Moscow great leverage over individual countries.

Western Europe wants closer business and energy relations with Russia and is afraid to upset Moscow, said David Smith, a former U.S. ambassador and director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi.

Meet and greet with Russian soldiers still on Georgian land

ODZISI, Georgia -- Boris hasn't been to his home in Krasnodar, Russia in a year. Now, the senior lieutenant is manning a checkpoint one kilometer inside the buffer zone around South Ossetia, which the Georgia says violates the ceasefire agreement.

Boris, the post's senior lieutenant, is on the left.

Russia and Georgia have applied different interpretations of the ceasefire agreement which ended the war in August between the two countries. The agreement says Russian troops are to be withdrawn from "zones adjacent" to South Ossetia and Abkhazia back to "pre-conflict lines" -- which are inside South Ossetia -- by Oct. 10. Russia focused on the former, and said on Thursday it had complied with the agreement ahead of the deadline. Georgia has focused on the latter part of the agreement, and said on Friday that Russia was maintaining four illegal checkpoints inside its territory.

None of that really matters much to Boris. Like a good soldier, he follows orders.


"I go where I'm told to go," he said. His face is weathered, but when he smiles, you can see the boy close behind the 25 year old's face. A wide, jagged scar runs from the left corner of his mouth back across his cheek and onto his neck.

Boris and his patrol are infantry in the Russia's 58th Army. They were never part of the peacekeeping mission in South Ossetia but came here along with several thousand soldiers after war broke out. He wasn't involved in any fighting himself though.

Russia is still not letting EU monitors enter South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Me and several other journalists/friends spent an hour or so talking to Boris and a few of his soldiers, who weren't entirely sure what to make of us. We talked about sports, what they did all day and traded cigarettes. They told us they get paid crap and live in tents.

"I haven't seen my commander for awhile," Boris said, adding that he didn't know when he'd be back around.

The Russian Army was a shambles in the 1990s, and Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin has made military reform a priority, of sorts. To hear these soldiers talk, things sounded better, but like they had a far way to go to having a proper, professional military.

Before we'd left, we'd picked up cha cha -- Georgian version of vodka -- at a market in Tbilisi, but surprisingly, none of the soldiers would toast. I figured I'd be the only one not drinking there, and instead it was only the Western and Georgian journalists who toasted Russia, Georgia, world peace and such.


Even though Georgia says Russia is still illegally occupying its territory, it is not trying to take any drastic actions, according to the Interior Ministry's spokesman, Shota Utiavishvili.

A Georgian police officer not doing anything drastic as
he looks up the road leading to the Russian checkpoint.

The Georgian police manning a checkpoint about 600 meters down the road were definitely not taking any drastic actions on Friday. Instead the ten policemen there were leaning on their cars -- AK-47s hanging down -- eating sunflower seeds and smoking. Two were digging a hole around the small building at the outpost.

EU monitors back at the Georgian checkpoint -- and a puppy.

Javier Solana of the European Union gave way to Russia's reading of the ceasefire agreement, and confirmed they met their deadline.

The EU's decision to not hold Russia to returning to pre-conflict lines of Aug. 7, could lend credence to South Ossetia's and Abkhazia's claims of independence.

However, the same day, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in Gori that Russia had not fully complied with the ceasefire agreement. France currently holds the EU's rotating presidency.

The EU, OSCE and UN will begin talks in Geneva on Oct. 15 to discuss the future of the situation in Georgia.

Boris said he will be at his checkpoint for the foreseeable future.

"This conflict ended the way it started. What was the point?" he asked.

Like many foreigners, he is not exactly sure why the Georgians and South Ossetians are fighting. He said he can't tell much difference between the two people.

But until he hears otherwise, Boris will continue to check car trunks for bombs and the papers of people on the marshrutkas -- minibuses -- running between Tbilisi and Akhalgori.

Boris and me.

EU monitors begin patrolling

TBILISI, Georgia -- The EU monitors began patrols today in some areas of a buffer zone around Georgia's two separatist provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia had said yesterday that it would not allow the unarmed monitors into the buffer zone - a four-mile wide zone around the provinces set up under the French-brokered ceasefire agreement. However, the AP reports monitors have entered at some checkpoints.

Russian troops are supposed to pull out of territory controlled by Georgia before August's war by October 10.

As the deadline approaches tensions have been growing between Russia and Georgia over the past weeks. Georgia's Interior Ministry reports an unmanned aerial drone crashed inside Georgian territory on Tuesday. A Georgian policeman was killed and three injured in a firefight along the Abkhaz border on Sunday, September 21. In a separate incident that same day two policeman were injured by a mine blast in the same area.