Moscow Says to Veto Western Draft on Abkhaz UN Resolution

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s UN envoy, said Moscow would veto Western-proposed Security Council’s draft resolution on extending UN mission’s mandate containing a reference on 1808 resolution of April, 2008.

UN Security Council’s 1808 resolution reaffirms Georgia’s territorial integrity.

“In our traditional frankness, I indicated to them [Western members of the Security Council] that Russia will vote no on this draft,” Churkin said.

Churkin told reporters in New York after closed-door consultations that Russia was offering a technical roll-over – a resolution simply extending the UN mission’s mandate till July 15 – without any reference to the previous resolutions. He also said that Moscow was offering to make a reference to that technical roll-over “to all the relevant resolutions” without indicating the resolution numbers.

“If there is to be a vote, there is going to be a vote, but that resolution which has been proposed by our Western partners is not going to be adopted tonight by the Security Council,” he added.

If no resolution is adopted that would mean ceasing of the UN observer mission, which has been monitoring situation on the both sides of the Abkhaz administrative border since 1993.

The mission’s mandate expires at midnight New York time – 8am Tbilisi time on June 16. The Security Council is expected to reconvene for closed-door consultations before the deadline expires.

Meanwhile in Tbilisi, President Saakashvili reiterated on June 15 that Georgia was firm in its position that although willing to maintain “this weak and ineffective” UN mission Tbilisi would not accept absence of reference to Georgia’s territorial integrity in the resolution.

“Russia said: do you want to maintain this mission? Then give up the main issue – give up any talks about Georgia’s territorial integrity,” he told lawmakers from the ruling party at a meeting on June 15.

He said that UN Secretary General’s recent report omitting a previous wording in the title “Abkhazia, Georgia” was “the first signal” that the UN secretariat “practically agreed with this demand by Russia.” He said because of Tbilisi’s condemnation of such stance it was possible to initiate active diplomatic efforts by the Western allies not to allow Russia to push for its attempts neglecting Georgia’s territorial integrity.

“We have strictly pushed this issue and I want to say that this time Russia will fail to achieve what it wanted so much,” he added.

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