Agency Caucasus – Talks expected to begin in the United Nations (UN) headquarters in Geneva on Wednesday between Russia and Georgia over the statuses of South Ossetia and Abkhazia suffered an early fiasco.
The talks were suspended because Georgia resisted a stipulation by Russia that representatives from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia should also participate in the talks.
Russia has already warned before that it might not join the talks unless South Ossetia and Abkhazia were represented during the one-day meeting in Geneva. Russia’s delegation, along with the delegations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, left the UN headquarters only one hour after they had arrived there.
While it was headlined ‘Talks Suspended’ by international news agencies, Georgian officials accused their Russian counterparts of not ever joining the talks.
PARTIES BLAME EACH OTHER
In Brussels, Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili pointed the finger at Russia for causing the first day’s talks to end without beginning at all: "Russia has just walked out of the Geneva talks … which basically means that Russia has no interest whatsoever at this stage in any diplomatic process," he said, Reuters reported.
However, the head of Russia’s delegation, Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin, said that the meeting should have been taken to be an opportunity to bring the conflict to a resolution with the participation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both: "The event was de facto broken up by Georgia, which refused to take part in the plenary session," Interfax news agency quoted Karasin as saying. "They failed to break up the meeting, it took place and that is extremely important."
UN spokeswoman Elena Ponomareva said that the parties had suspended the Geneva talks.
Efforts to find an acceptable format for the talks turned out to be fruitless. Besides, the Russian administration stipulated that both South Ossetia and Abkhazia should be guaranteed security by imposing an international embargo on the sales of offensive weapons to Georgia, which demands that Russia should withdraw its troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well.
The European Union (EU), UN and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (O.S.C.E.) had organised this meeting, and they had hoped that it would lead to talks every two weeks to develop confidence as well as to help resolve the conflict between Russia and Georgia.
The new talks had been set to begin provisionally on November 18, said EU envoy Pierre Morel during a press briefing.
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