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Montenegro's independence could open a Pandora's box for other separatist movements in Europe and the former Soviet Union, with some already claiming the right to follow the same path. Separatists in Spain's Basque and Catalan regions were among the first to welcome Montenegro's independence vote as a positive omen for their aspirations of loosening ties with Madrid. But Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed the situations in his country and Montenegro were "politically, diplomatically, juridically" incomparable and that making such a comparison would represent a "great irresponsibility". His view was supported by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana,...

SUKHUM, Abkhazia -- At first glance the tiny self-declared republic of Abkhazia on the eastern coast of the Black Sea is an earthly paradise. For decades its palm trees, warm scented air, and long beaches drew thousands of holidaymakers from across the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev relaxed on its shores. Even today, it is famed for its gentle climate, its mandarin oranges, and its sweeping boughs of yellow mimosa blossom. But look closer, and there are signs of an uglier past. Side streets in the seaside capital, Sukhum, are dominated by the gutted remains of smoke-blackened houses,...

Mar 6 2006 1:16PM Abkhazia may support South Ossetia in case of war - official MOSCOW. March 6 (Interfax) - Abkhaz Prime Minister Alexander Ankvab objects to a pullout of Russian peacekeepers from the unrecognized republic and says that Sukhumi might assist South Ossetia if the conflict escalates. "Abkhazia has declared 2006 the year of South Ossetia. No one can deny us the right to help [in case of hostilities in South Ossetia]," he said in an interview published in the Monday issue of the newspaper Vremya Novostei. Ankvab said that he feels very "negative" about the tensions surrounding South...

Tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow rose further this week with the latter saying it would indefinitely stop issuing entry visas for Georgian nationals and requesting that Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli postpone a planned working visit to Russia. The new escalation comes days after Georgian lawmakers called for a review of the 1992 peace agreement that put an end to the war with South Ossetia and voted Russian peacekeepers out of the separatist republic.

The world has noticed Russia's use of energy as a political weapon to pressure neighboring Western-oriented states. Now it appears that Russia does not intend to confine itself to energy to tame "intractable" neighbors but contemplates a far more conventional and well-tried weapon -- the use of military force. The new Russian national security doctrine outlined by Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, on your editorial page -- "Russia Must Be Strong," Jan. 11 -- clearly states that Russia's top national security concern is the "internal situation" in some members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Mr. Ivanov justified military force...

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, on his arrival in Germany yesterday on an official visit, called Russia a “very rich, insidious, malicious and experienced enemy.” Shortly before that, Georgian Ambassador to the UN Revaz Adamia accused Russia of genocide of Georgians. Thus Georgian officials are doing everything they can to place Russian-Georgian differences on a world level and gain Western support in the issue of withdrawing Russian peacekeepers from South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A Blow against Peacekeepers The war of words between Russia and Georgia reached a new height on February 1. The cause of the escalation was a collision between...

Russia has withdrawn support for an international plan to grant autonomy to the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, raising fears it could shift its backing more clearly towards Abkhazian calls for secession. The move came as the United Nations Security Council prepared to renew the mandate of a UN monitoring force there, and has prompted western diplomatic concern over Russia’s intentions in the region. Russia said during a closed-door meeting in New York that it could no longer allow reference to a 2000 paper drafted by the former UN special representative Dieter Boden on Abkhazia’s future. The paper talked of...

Russia's use of natural gas to exert economic and political pressure on Ukraine has caused grave concern in the West. But Russia's pressure on Georgia has been even heavier - and has scarcely been noticed. In Georgia, as in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to implement the doctrine of a "liberal empire" put forward in October 2003 by Anatoli Chubais, the chairman of United Energy System (RAO UES), Russia's energy monopoly. According to Chubais, Russia will never find a place in either NATO or the European Union, so it must create an alternative to both, a new empire of...

Tbilisi. December 06 (Prime-News) – “The leaders of the breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia refuse to negotiate with the government of Georgia. But to negotiate with this government of Georgia is difficult, impossible in fact. So Sokhumi and Tskhinvali are right. The government of Georgia changes its political views every day”, goes the interview of with Maia Nikoleishvili, featured on Russian UÒÐÎ.RU website. Maia Nikoleishvili is one of the leaders of Anti-Soros Movement, supporting Igor Giorgadze, former Georgian KGB boss, internationally wanted for terrorist attack against Eduard Shevardnadze, Georgian ex-president. “I do not think myself a pro-Russian person....

Moscow Denies U.S. Mediation in Georgia 02/01/2006 21:26 Russian Foreign Ministry denied on December 30 that the United States are involved in mediation process to solve conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Speaking at the European Institute in Washington on December 15, the U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said that “in Georgia, we are bridging gaps between Tbilisi, Moscow, and local leaders in the rest of Georgia.” “It is well-known that in frames of current negotiating format, Russia facilitates settlement of the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-South Ossetian conflicts. We do not know anything about the U.S. “bringing gaps” between Tbilisi...

Head of Ingur Hydroelectric Power Station security service Amiran Uratadze, born in 1947, was killed in the village of Dikhazurga (Abkhazia) on December 11. As a REGNUM correspondent in Sukhumi reports, citing Abkhaz Interior Minister Otar Khetsia, on December 11, at 13:30 local time five unidentified armed persons stopped a car driven by Austrian citizen Ernst Missebner, Siemens Company engineer working on the rehabilitation of the hydroelectric station, and opened fire. In the car, apart from Uratadze, two women and a 7-year-old girl were. At the moment of the clash Uratadze used his weapon and managed to produce several shots....

SUKHUMI, December 7 (RIA Novosti) - The prime minister of the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia said Wednesday that Georgia's breakaway republic was an independent state and will never be a part of Georgia again. "We are free people and are building an independent state," Alexander Ankvab told U.S. Ambassador to Georgia John F. Tefft. "In August 1992, the Georgian leadership decided to eliminate Abkhazians," he said, adding that Abkhazian people would never forget the price they had paid for victory. "Unfortunately, the current statements by Georgian leaders are not helping to stabilize our relations," the premier said. The sides also...

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov.) Washington has officially announced its readiness to join the talks on the settlement of the long and slowly developing Transdnestr conflict. The self-proclaimed republic is trying to protect its independence from the encroachments of Moldova. The U.S. State Department has also expressed a desire to become a major player on another "field of contention" in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - South Ossetia. This enclave is trying to gain independence from Georgia, especially after the bloody clashes of the early 1990s, when both sides lost thousands of lives. To make a...

On October 15 in Moscow, officials from the presidential administration and other Kremlin-connected figures hosted a "Forum on Democracy and Multiculturalism in the Euro-East." The participants included representatives of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Karabakh, activists of pro-Russia parties and associations from several post-Soviet countries, and Moscow figures who -- according to Kremlin consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, speaking at the Forum -- "play a major if often shadowy role in developing Russia's real policy" (Regnum, October 15). Outlining geopolitical challenges and opportunities to Russia, Pavlovsky noted that the United States is focusing its hostile attention on Belarus, "our basic military-political ally."...

SUKHUMI, September 30 (RIA Novosti) - The president of Abkhazia, a self-proclaimed independent republic on Georgian territory, said he would not agree to the deployment of U.S. and EU peacekeeping forces in the region. "The CIS peacekeeping troops were sent to the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone in line with the May 14, 1994 agreement on a ceasefire and the disengagement of forces," Sergei Bagapsh said, responding to a proposal by Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to involve the United States and the European Union in the peacemaking process. "Abkhazia does not plan on making any amendments to the document." "No other countries...

President Mikheil Saakashvili said at a news conference on September 9, that Russia support militarization of the breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “We are watching the conflict zones closely. Militarization is underway with the Russian assistance. We should find new approach with Russia... This [conflict in South Ossetia] is not a problem between Ossetians and Georgians; this is a problem between Russia and Georgia. We should settle our relations over this territory [South Ossetia],” Saakashvili said. “I have talked about this with Putin and I am expecting pragmatic response now,” he added. He said that Georgia will solve conflicts through...

Chaos swirls around Abkhazia, breakaway republic in once-Soviet Georgia. The grenade-thrower who targeted President Bush in May, $80,000 on his head, has been captured in a raid which may or may not have involved the FBI. Last month, Russia agreed to pull its forces from all Georgian territory -- through Abkhazia, where the agreement has no force and the Kremlin keeps hundreds of peacekeepers. And in 2003, Georgian Minister of State Security Valeri Khaburdzania warned anyone reading the National Interest that "Wahhabi organizations have sprung up on the territory of Abkhazia, and where Wahhabis are, terrorists are not far behind."...

TBILISI, Georgia, May 10 - President Bush told tens of thousands of cheering Georgians packed into the city's Freedom Square on Tuesday that the United States would stand with Georgia, a former Soviet republic, as it built its young democracy, and then pointedly he warned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that the sovereignty of Georgia "must be respected by all nations." A screen set up on a street in Tbilisi, Georgia, showed the departure of President Bush's plane on Tuesday after the president concluded his meetings with Georgia's leaders on the last stop of his five-day European trip. On...

TBILISI, Georgia -- For 60 years the word "Yalta" has meant betrayal and abandonment. The diplomatic accord reached between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States in that sleepy Black Sea resort relegated millions of people to a ruthless tyranny. As President Bush said last week in Latvia: "The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable." Thankfully, the division of Europe created at Yalta, and the Iron Curtain that marked its boundary, are ghosts in our past. The...

Russia has seen its influence in the Caucasus - and the rest of the former Soviet Union - wane significantly since the November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia. Although economics play a part in the drive to become closer to the United States and the European Union, Moscow largely blames post-revolution Georgia for the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine and its perceived loss of influence there. While Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko were in Strasburg for a Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin made no secret of meeting separatist leaders in Moscow,...