Georgian Envoy Comments on Truncated UN Security Council Resolution on Abkhazia

Georgia’s Ambassador to the UN Revaz Adamia said that the UN Security Council’s January 31 resolution on Abkhazia indicates that decision-makers in Russia have “decided to change their position” and “withdraw their support for the basic principle of conflict resolution – the principle of defining the status of Abkhazia within the State of Georgia.”

The UN Security Council’s January 31, 2006 resolution only extended the mandate of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) until March 31. The texts of the previous resolutions, along with the extension of the UNOMIG mandate, always reaffirmed support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and reiterated “strong support” for the document on the Basic Principles for the Distribution of Competences between Tbilisi and Sukhumi.

“Today is the first time in the long history of this process when we have no text for the  resolution – what we have is just a technical roll-over, simply extending the mandate of the UN Observer Mission in Georgia for two months,” Revaz Adamia said at a news conference on January 31 

“It appeared that the Russian Federation, a prominent member of the Security Council and a member of the [UN Secretary General’s] Group of Friends, bearing, also, the status of a facilitator of the conflict resolution process, suddenly decided to change its position. And this is not just a slight modification of their position,” Adamia said.

“The policy-makers in the Russian Federation decided to withdraw their support for the basic principle of conflict resolution – the principle of defining of the status of Abkhazia within the State of Georgia. Subsequently, any mention of so-called ‘Boden Paper’ – the document on ‘the Basic Principles for the Distribution of Competences between Tbilisi and Sokhumi’ – is also denied,” Revaz Adamia added.

He said that although the Russian representatives still continue to support the territorial integrity of Georgiain their official statements, “what is going on the ground in the zone of conflict is fundamentally different.”

“As President Saakashvili declared during the recent World Summit in New York, in September of last year, Abkhazia is under de facto annexation, manifesting in a variety of forms,” the Georgian envoy said.