Abkhazia: “Spiral of Tension” Continues
Below is an article published by the ITAR-TASS News Agency;
The local administration said that he attended a meeting Abkhazia’s government in exile that was transferred by his decision from
“Current matters connected with the socio-economic rehabilitation of the gorge and the implementation of respective programmes were reviewed at the meeting,” the administration said.
Saakashvili’s trip to the Kodori Gorge in the capacity of the president is the second.
He first visited the “government in exile” shortly after it was based in the gorge.
An Itar-Tass correspondent in Abkhazia said that Saakashvili’s visit caused a new spiral of tension in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.
The president of the self-proclaimed republic, Sergei Bagapsh, then called a provocation Saakashvili’s declaring the renaming of the Kodori Gorge into “
Bagapsh said that “another provocation of the Georgian side will have serious consequences for the negotiations and the relations between Abkhazia and Georgia”.
The European Union’s special representative for the
In October 2006, the monitoring of the Georgian-controlled part of the gorge resumed after a long interval revealed there the presence of Georgian policemen and an arms depot that contained 112 mm and 82 mm mortars, an anti-aircraft gun, ammunition and a portable anti-aircraft system.
The Georgian side then said that the “depot belonged to the Georgian president’s former representative Emzar Kvitsiani, and all these arms were seized from him”.
The UN Security Council expressed concern over the situation in the Kodori Gorge and called on
According to the
The Kodori Gorge is Abkhazia’s territory, but after the end of the Georgian-Abkhazian war in 1993, its upper part remained under the control of Georgian authorities.
In July 2006,
This put the Georgian-Abkhazian settlement talks in a deadlock.