Eurasia Press & News
President Saakashvili said Tbilisi was in “intensive consultations” with its western allies not to allow the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution, which would not make a reference to Georgia’s territorial integrity.
The UN Security Council’s new Abkhaz resolution is expected by June 15, when the current four-month mandate of UN observers, monitoring situation on the both sides of the Abkhaz administrative border, expires.
“Russia, which has right of veto, are demanding certain compromises on the issue of not reflecting Georgia’s territorial integrity adequately in the resolution in exchange for its consent on further presence of UN mission,” Saakashvili said in televised remarks made a session of the National Security Council.
He said that although current UN mission and its mandate in the region was “ineffective,” Georgia was anyway in favor of the mission’s further presence.
“But if in exchange [of UN mission’s continued presence] Russia is offering the international community to compromise on Georgia’s territorial integrity… no matter how much we may want to maintain UN mission, we can not let compromises at the expense of the territorial integrity,” Saakashvili said.
“There should be either a resolution precisely reflecting that each square meter of Abkhazia is part of Georgia, as well as the respect to Georgia’s sovereignty and right of displaced persons to return to that territory, or there should be a technical roll-over [resolution], which will reaffirm all the previous [Security Council] resolutions, which reflect that [Abkhazia] is integral part of Georgia,” he added.
He said that Russia was showing “total inflexibility” in talks over new resolution.
“It is actually refusing to agree on anything, hoping that we will yield to blackmail and provocations; no matter of what kind of pressure, blackmail and provocation is used Georgia, like it did last August, will not make any compromises on this [territorial integrity] and no one should have an illusion about it,” Saakashvili said.
He said that “at least leader of one” Security Council permanent member state was “directly involved in preparing the resolution, receiving information on the process on the daily basis.”
He also reiterated remarks by Georgia’s UN envoy to UN, Alexandre Lomaia, and said: “We have been very dissatisfied with the recent report of the UN Secretary General, who in fact submitted to Russia’s blackmail.”
