Interfax’s Interview
British Ambassador to Russia Tony Brenton has said he hopes Russia will reconsider its position on recognizing Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence and vowed that the United Kingdom would take part in a European Union mission of military monitors in the South Caucasus.
“I do not know the exact numbers, but I do know that we are looking for twenty, thirty, or forty participants, and I am assuming that they will be on the ground as the European community gets its people onto the ground over the next few days,” Brenton said in an interview with Interfax.
Times New Roman;”> “I hope that your readers will note that this will be a fantastic operation. The European community, the European Union from a standing start on the 8th of September has put together a big peacekeeping observer operation in the course of three weeks. That is a strong demonstration of the will of the European Union to contribute to getting the tensions down and to getting peace back in the region,” he said.
Brenton described Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “a big mistake, because the effect of it is that it makes it much more complicated for us to find a long-term solution to tensions between Georgia and Russia and between Georgia and Abkhazia and Georgia and South Ossetia.”
“It is a pity that Russia said it is irreversible,” Brenton said.
“I hope that, on reflection, Russia will think again, because the precedent we have for this is the president of Turkey recognizing North Cyprus, and it has landed Turkey for a period of thirty years with a small enclave unrecognized anywhere else in the world and placing on Turkey an economic and political burden. It would be very sad to see Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the same situation,” he said.
Commenting on Russia’s proposal that an embargo should be imposed on weapon supplies to Georgia, Brenton said, “I do not think that Russia has formally made a proposal to that effect. I think that we would want to see Georgia having the capacity to defend itself in the future and having normal armed forces. I am sure we would not want to see, on the other hand, a sort of military buildup in the region which led to the problems of the 7th and 8th of August,” he said.
Brenton urged the beginning of a discussion on launching a peace process “with nobody setting too many preconditions.”
The immediate issue is the implementation of the 8th of September agreement [reached at negotiations between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy]. Once that agreement is fully implemented, then I hope the political tensions will begin to calm down and we will begin to be able to discuss the resumption of contacts of various sorts,” he said.
“I know that the French presidency of the EU, for example, has made it clear that on the assumption that the 8th of September agreement is implemented, the European Union will then resume the negotiations on the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia,” he said.
“NATO has not yet reflected on what the conditions have to be for the resumption of NATO-Russia contacts,” he said.
Source: www.interfax.com