Sukhum – “Turkish officials did not prevent Abkhazian President’s trip to their country,” Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said in an effort to ease tension over cancellation of his superior President Sergei Bagapsh’s Turkish trip due to interference from the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh’s trip was cancelled not because of pressure from the Turkish Foreign Ministry but because of the recently mounting political tension over a possible cross-border military operation on North Iraq in response to deadly attacks from the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, Shamba told the Kavkazki Uzel: “Nobody pressed him to cancel his trip. It would simply have been rude of us, Abkhazians, to mark a special day of our own in celebrations at a time when Turkish families mourned the loss of their sons.”
Shamba said that both administrations of Abkhazia and Turkey made a joint decision to cancel the trip, because it would not have been the case otherwise: “If the Turkish government had been against a trip by the Abkhazian administration to Turkey, no Turkish officials would have bothered to prepare for the visit.”
Shamba further accused anonymously those of trying to spoil the relations between Abkhazia and Turkey, a country where most members of the Abkhazian Diaspora are living.
Displeased with the official format of the visit, the Turkish Foreign Ministry officials directly contacted Shamba to have Sergei Bagapsh cancel his trip to Turkey. (Agency Caucasus)
