Georgian MFA Comments on Abkhaz Railway Talks

In a statement issued on August 15 the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Russian authorities ?to exert adequate influence on the Abkhaz side? and ensure the involvement of Georgian experts in the assessment of the current condition of the railway in breakaway Abkhazia jointly with the Russian and Abkhaz representatives.
 
Georgian experts were to join their counterparts from Russia and Abkhazia on August 9, but, as officials in Tbilisi contend, the Abkhaz side refused to grant entry to several Georgian experts who are themselves internally displaced persons from Abkhazia. As a result, the Russian and Abkhaz experts began the needs assessment works without their Georgian counterparts.

In a statement issued on August 12 Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikheil Kaminin accused the Georgian side of holding ?this important economic project hostage to political ambitions.?
 
?Providing a cause for bewilderment is the tendentious assessment of the situation by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation [referring to spokesman Mikhail Kaminin], given the fact that it was the Abkhazian side that infused politics into this purely technical issue of an economic project,? the statement issued by the Georgian Foreign Ministry reads.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian)