By IRNA,
Moscow : The Georgian government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on Friday, and Russia responded by doing the same.
It marks the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russia had severed formal diplomatic ties with one of the 14 other autonomous republics that became independent states in 1991.
It was also a sign of ripples still being felt in post-Soviet politics after the war earlier this month over the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Adding to the tension, a lawmaker in South Ossetia said Friday that Russia intended to eventually absorb the province at the center of the war that broke out August 7 when Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia to wrest back control from separatists, prompting Russia to send in hundreds of tanks and troops.
The countries will retain consular offices on each other’s territories, handling such matters as issuing passports and assisting their citizens with legal affairs, but the political ties will now be handled through intermediaries, a spokeswoman for the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.
Georgia is now in talks with several countries that may assume the role of representing Georgia in Moscow, the spokeswoman said, as, for example, the Swiss Embassy in Tehran represents US interests in Iran, a country the United States has no diplomatic relations with.
The Georgian Parliament passed a law Thursday instructing the government to sever ties with Russia as one of seven points of protest to Russian Army occupation of the two separatist regions and a security zone around them, and Russian government recognition of the two regions as independent countries.
The law does not prohibit Russian and Georgian diplomats from meeting on the territory of third countries.
The other points abrogate all treaties allowing Russian troops to be present in Georgia as peacekeepers – with the exception of the EU- brokered cease-fire accord that ended the war – and instruct the Georgian attorney general to investigate allegations that Russian troops drove ethnic Georgians from villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The law, called “On the Occupation of Georgian Territories by Russia,” also characterizes the militias of the separatist regions as illegal armed formations.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded that the severing of diplomatic relations would harm efforts at reaching negotiated settlements.
“Without such a channel for contacts, we will have difficulties trying to bring our points of view to each other’s attention,” the ministry spokesman, Andrei Nesterenko, said, according to the Interfax news agency.
The breach between Georgia and Russia was the first for Russia with a former Soviet state since 1991, according to Vyacheslav Nikiknov, the director of the Polity Foundation, a Moscow research institute.
In another development, Abkhazia, which Russia recognized on Tuesday, on Friday asked Russia to represent its interests abroad, Interfax reported.
The region’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, said the provision would be included in a so-called friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance treaty the enclave is preparing to sign with Russia.
Russia is offering a similar agreement to South Ossetia.
On Friday, the South Ossetian parliamentary speaker, Znaur Gassiyev, said that Russia would absorb South Ossetia within “several years” or earlier.
He said that position was “firmly stated” by both the province’s leader, Eduard Kokoity, and Medvedev in talks in Moscow earlier in the week.
In Moscow, a Kremlin spokeswoman said Friday there was “no official information” on the talks.
A Georgian lawmaker dismissed the assertion, saying his country would eventually regain control of the two breakaway provinces.
“The separatist regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the Russian authorities are cut off from reality,” the lawmaker, Gigi Tsereteli, said in Tbilisi.
“The world has already become different, and Russia will not long be able to occupy sovereign Georgian territory.”
Also Friday, Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, pressed for support for Russia’s military actions in Georgia from Central Asian leaders, whose countries’ ties with the West are now seen as more tenuous as future energy exports are unlikely to travel in a westward direction, through Georgia. That leaves Russia, China and Iran as potential export routes.
Medvedev promised the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmon, Russian investment in hydroelectric plants and natural gas fields.
He added that Tajikistan’s reputation and role were significant and invariably belonged to the sphere of Russia’s strategic interests,” Interfax reported.
Also Friday, the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev issued a plea for calm in escalating tensions between Russia and the West.
“Stop, stop and again, stop,” Gorbachev said. “It is important to save everything that has been done in recent years in various areas of cooperation.”