By RIA Novosti,
Sukhumi : EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana arrived on Friday in Sukhumi, the capital of the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia, for discussions with the Abkhazian president on the resumption of peace talks with Tbilisi.
Peace talks between Abkhazia and Georgia broke off in July 2006 when Tbilisi sent troops into Abkhazia’s Kodori Gorge and established an alternative Abkhaz administration there.
The province is also the focus of a dispute currently raging between Russia and Georgia over Russian support for both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another breakaway Georgian republic.
Tbilisi recently accused Russia of shooting down a Georgian unmanned spy plane over the region. Russia has denied the claims.
On June 5, Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh reiterated that his country would stick to its previously declared conditions for the resumption of talks, “despite the fact that such a high-ranking EU envoy is visiting Abkhazia.”
Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between 10,000 and 30,000 people were killed in the subsequent hostilities. The two sides signed a ceasefire in 1994.
The breakaway republic’s leadership has ruled out the possibility of any peace talks until all Georgian troops are withdrawn from the upper part of Abkhazia’s Kodori Gorge and Georgia formally pledges not to resume hostilities.
Bagapsh added that Georgia should stick to the terms of the 1994 Moscow agreement, declaring a formal ceasefire and the deployment of a CIS peacekeeping force.
A collective CIS peacekeeping force, staffed mainly with Russian military personnel, has been deployed in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone since the end of Georgian-Abkhazian hostilities.
“There is no alternative to Russia’s ‘blue helmets’ and the issue of their replacement will not be discussed with anyone,” he said.
As well as its peacekeeping force in the region, Moscow also recently deployed some 300 unarmed railroad troops in Abkhazia to repair rail tracks. The move led to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the European Parliament to call for the withdrawal of these ‘extra’ troops.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has repeatedly called for changes to be made to the peacekeeping arrangement in the country’s conflict zone with breakaway Abkhazia, and asked other countries to contribute.