No Concrete Proposals from Russia – Georgian Security Chief
Aleksandre Lomaia, the secretary of the Georgian National Security Council, said that the Russian side had not put forth any concrete proposal that would help to overcome crisis in the bilateral relations.
President Saakashvili met with deputy secretary of the Russian National Security Council, Yuri Zubakov, in Tbilisi late on May 29.
Lomaia, who was present at the meeting, said later on the same day: “We are disappointed… We were expecting concrete proposals on how to overcome the crisis in our bilateral relations, but unfortunately we have not heard these ideas. This is dangerous in the light of existing crisis in our relations.”
Earlier, immediately after the meeting, Lomaia, however, said: “The fact in itself that Russia has sent an official envoy to Georgia is positive.”
“The goal of this visit [by the Russian official] was to specify details of the agenda of the meeting between the two presidents. I can tell you that Georgia has conveyed to the Russian representatives those major issues, which led our relations into crisis; that is the April 16 decision, which in fact annulled Georgia’s sovereignty on part of its territory and another one is illegal deployment of [Russia’s additional peacekeeping] troops in Abkhazia. These are those issues, which the Georgian President thinks, should be resolved in order to make it possible to overcome the crisis and move forward towards the normalization of ties. I think that these problems have been understood by our Russian colleague and now we will wait for the meeting between the two presidents.”