Agency Caucasus – Abkhazia favours signing a deal with Russia to allow its military bases to be set up on the territory of Abkhazia, President Sergei Bagapsh said on Thursday in Sochi, a Black Sea resort in Russia.
"We will enter into a military agreement with the Russian Federation to protect ourselves against aggression," Bagapsh told reporters, Reuters reported. “It will be an agreement about the deployment of military bases on the territory of Abkhazia. After a political agreement we will sign a military agreement about bases, also in our sea ports.”
Abkhazia considers joining the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), an organized grouping of former Soviet republics, in reaction to Georgia’s bid to join NATO.
The president of Abkhazia took a similar position to that o Russia when he voiced his concern that the whole northern Caucasus region would come under a real threat from Georgia’s possible accession to NATO.
Abkhazia, a small Black Sea region with a population of about 34,000, allied with South Ossetia in its fighting in the 1990s against Georgia. Russia recognised both countries as independent in August after its troops thwarted an attempt by Tbilisi to bring South Ossetia back under its control by force.
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