|
MOSCOW HAS NO MORE CREDENCE TO TBILISI
ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE,
Civil Society Program Coordinator, the Eurasia Foundation, Georgia Office
Recently I have written that as soon as the political gale in the Georgia-Russia relations subsides Tbilisi will be seeking to soothe the remaining tensions and to retain at the same time its pro-Western vector.
This conciliatory stance of the official Tbilisi is intended to show Moscow and the whole international community that the Saakashvili Administration is eager to restart the two countries’ dialogue. This shift in political priorities indicates that the influential faction in the Georgian Administration advocating belligerent policy towards Russia has lost its power at least for a wile.
Georgia would have made its good will more explicit had it proposed to hold the meeting of Vladimir Putin and Mikheil Saakashvili in the framework of the CIS Summit. But the statements made by Georgian President Saakashvili were far from that; he particularly said that though “Georgia considered the CIS to be very inefficient” they would use it as a rostrum to air Georgia’s position. That’s exactly what Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Nino Burdjanadze did during the recent CIS Interparliamentary Assembly in Saint-Petersburg. Georgia’s drive to use every new CIS Summit only to win another round of the information war with Russia is unlikely to motivate the Russian leader to meet Saakashvili.
The Georgian authorities haven’t yet made public why it is staying within the “ineffective” CIS architecture. But a reliable source in the Georgian government indicates that having compared all “dos” and “don’ts” of the Georgia’s withdrawal from the CIS the government had to postpone the initiative.
The stumbling stone of the dialogue of the two countries is the lack of mutual trust. With this in mind it’s hard to say what any of the parties implies when it is talking about their “willingness to maintain friendly relations”, “respect territorial integrity”, solve the conflicts, etc. Neither of the abovementioned allegations has been backed by concrete actions. And it would be naïve to think that the “friendship-with-Russia” declarations made by Saakashvili on the threshold of the CIS Summit pleased the ear of the Kremlin.
Should the meeting of the two Presidents have taken place, it would have been dominated by the issue of the supplies of the Russian gas to Georgia.
In this respect it should be noted that Moscow that considers the present Georgia’s authorities to be hostile, won’t let them live through the winter without problems and to assure peoples’ liability this way.
As it is not clear what kind of proposals Saakashvili has prepared for the Minsk Summit and what could be Moscow’s possible reaction, we have nothing to do but to wait for the actual results of the Summit.
November 28, 2006
|
