Agency Caucasus – Russia will make a call during the peace talks in Geneva on October 15 for an embargo against the sale of arms to Georgia—the aim of which is to keep South Ossetia and Abkhazia safe from future Georgian attacks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday that Russia would call for an international imposition of an embargo on the sales of offensive weapons to Tbilisi, capital of Georgia.
“It is our conviction that an international embargo on sales of offensive weapons to Georgia is an urgent step,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian news agency Interfax.
Russia will also make a further call during the Geneva talks for the establishment of a security mechanism around Abkhazia and South Ossetia to keep them safe from future Georgian offensives, Lavrov said. He underlined the need take some definite action for the prevention of further violence in the region: “In these areas adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia a special regime should be established that will not allow anyone to carry out provocations," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
In the meantime, Russia has withdrawn on Wednesday most of its troops from buffer zones that it set up on the territory of Georgia against which it fought a five-day war in August. "Russia seems to have completed most of the withdrawal," said Hansjoerg Haber, head of a European Union (EU) monitoring mission, according to Reuters.
Russia is bound to pull the whole of its troops back from Georgian territory until Friday under a EU-brokered ceasefire, negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to end the five-day long war. Some 200 EU observers are observing the withdrawal of Russian troops to ensure that the ceasefire deal is not being violated. However, Russia thinks of it as being better to keep 7,600 troops in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the regions that it recognized as independent states after it crushed an offensive attempt by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to retake South Ossetia.
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