Agency Caucasus—Russia raised on October 28 an objection to Georgia being allowed to take and spend the international aid of up to $4.6 billion on the rearmament of its own army.
"We do not want this assistance to be used to rearm the Georgian army or be a temptation to unleash another adventure. I hope that everybody understands this," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after he joined on Tuesday in St. Petersburg a meeting of the Russia-European Union Permanent Partnership Council.
A promise was jointly made by European Unions officials and other participants at the donor conference in Brussels last week to allow the money to be spent only for civilian needs, Lavrov said.
Russia has provided and continues to provide humanitarian aid for reconstructing the two Caucasian regions that it has recently recognized as independent states after one of them, South Ossetia, was heavily attacked by Georgia in early August. The other one is Abkhazia.
Russia accuses the West of being biased in favour of Georgia and against Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While the scale of destruction in South Ossetia is incomparably higher than that in Georgia, South Ossetia gets a very little amount of financial aid from the West—an amount that is incomparably less than the amount of aid that goes to Georgia from the West.
Eneko Landaburu, the Director General of the European Commission Directorate General for External Relations, said on October 28 that part of the whole amount of Western aid for Georgia should reach Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well.
Meanwhile, Russia has come under accusations from Tbilisi that it was obstructing the distribution of international aid to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were immediately dismissed as being “untrue” by a statement from Lavrov. "I have not heard statements from the Georgian Foreign Ministry alleging that Russia is obstructing the distribution of donor aid in the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. If such a statement has been made, the short answer is that this is another lie," the Russian news agency Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying.
HS
