Abashidze: Communication with Russia is “necessary”

Forging and strengthening international contacts is the best force against the so-called ‘Alliance and Strategic Partnership’ treaty signed between Russia and Georgia’s breakaway region Abkhazia, says the Georgian Prime Minister’s special representative for relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze.

"Our resources are to mobilise the international community and to actualize this issue on every format, which we are already doing. The Foreign Ministry is engaged in this very actively,” Abashidze said today.

"As you know, the Minister talked about what should be done at the United Nations and other international organisations including the OSCE, NATO, Council of Europe and the EU. These days an OSCE Ministerial is planned. Maximum [attention] to this topic is needed. All government branches should get involved in the implementation of this action plan. Unfortunately, this is the main force that we actually have at hand,” Abashidze noted.

The PM’s representative said a date for his next meeting with Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gregory Karasin had not been planned, but preserving some sort of communication with Russia was necessary.

"We have currently taken a pause in regards to meetings,”Abashidze confirmed.

"As for the preservation of this channel of communication, I think that it is necessary to preserve some sort of it. We do not have diplomatic relations with this country. There is no country in the world that does not have a communication channel with Russia. Even Ukraine, which has even more complex relations with Russia, has different communications with [Russia]. In fact Ukraine has not broken off diplomatic relations with Russia as well,” he said.

"It does not matter if we like our neighbours or not, we should still have some contact with them,” he said.

Meanwhile, Georgia’s other occupied region Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) might sign a similar agreement with Russia at the beginning of next year. This information was announced by the de-facto Parliament Speaker of occupied Tskhinvali Anatoly Bibilov.