EU Official Calls for Mediation to Avert Armed Conflict
“We see that there is maybe an armed conflict if we don’t defuse these tensions there [in Georgia’s conflict zones],” EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner was quoted by AFP as saying on July 11.
She also said at a conference hosted by Brussels-based think-tank the European Policy Centre that a "quartet" of international powers, similar to the one in the Middle East, was needed to bring together Georgia and Russia and other parties such as the EU and the OSCE.
The EU external relations commissioner said that such an arrangement “could give opportunity to Georgia and Abkhazia to talk to each other directly, because until now they barely have talked to each other.”
Interfax news agency quoted “a diplomatic source” in Moscow as saying on July 11 that Russia was against western mediation in its relations with Tbilisi.
“We do not see any reason for anyone’s mediation,” the news agency quoted the unnamed source as saying. “We have a direct dialogue with Georgia; we maintain contacts.”
Georgia said on July 10 that it was recalling its ambassador from Moscow after Russia admitted its fighter jets had violated Georgian airspace with flights over breakaway South Ossetia.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on June 6 at a meeting with President Saakashvili that the two countries could normalize ties without western mediation.