Turkish Forum

Tag: Abkhazia

  • PIRATES OF THE BLACK SEA

    PIRATES OF THE BLACK SEA

    Nezavisimaya Gazeta
    September 1, 2009

    Backed by Russia, Abkhazia promises to seize Georgian ships
    Author: Yuri Simonjan
    RUSSIA MIGHT FIND ITSELF DRAGGED INTO A CONFLICT BETWEEN
    TBILISI AND SUKHUMI AGAIN

    Backed by Russia, Abkhazia is prepared to challenge Georgia in the
    Black Sea. “They leave us no choice. We will seize Georgian
    ships,” Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said. Georgia had
    seized and arrested several ships on the run to and from Abkhazia
    last month.
         Tbilisi in its turn only emphasized the resolve to board and
    detain all vessels entering territorial waters of Georgia,
    including the Abkhazian part, without permit.
         Sukhumi turned to Moscow and immediately obtained its promise
    of assistance. Ships navigating territorial waters of Abkhazia
    will be protected by Russian and Abkhazians border guards. “All
    attention was focused on the Abkhazian-Georgian land border. The
    situation at sea requires attention too,” Shamba announced.
         The Georgian Coast Guard detained 23 ships for “violation of
    the entry regulations” this year and nearly 70 over the last four
    years. The ships are almost always Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian,
    and Greek.
         “Seizing ships in neutral waters, Georgia commits acts of
    piracy. Our appeals to the UN and EU remain unanswered which only
    encourages Georgia. Tbilisi must have forgotten that Georgian
    ships pass us by on the way to Ukrainian, Bulgaria, and Greece and
    that we can respond in kind,” Shamba said.
         The minister said that the situation had been more or less
    tolerable until US Vice President Josef Biden’s visit to Georgia
    this spring. “The Georgian authorities must have been given
    assurances of some sort,” Shamba assumed. He announced that
    Georgia’s actions constitute a violation of the settlement
    agreement reached with the European Union’s help.
         Official Tbilisi pays no heed to Sukhumi’s protestations. It
    maintains that sailing into Abkhazian ports without authorization
    from the central government of Georgia is a violation that will
    not be tolerated.
         Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister David Dzhalagania said at
    the press conference this Monday that participation of Russia
    would be a height of cynicism. He added that Russia had already
    assaulted Georgia once.
         “Russia’s attempts to protect trespassers in the Georgian
    territorial waters will be appraised and treated as piracy.
    Freight traffic to Abkhazia without Tbilisi’s permit is a gross
    violation of the Georgian legislation,” State Minister for
    Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said.
         Military expert Irakly Sesiashvili said that Tbilisi was
    trying to bite more than it could possibly chew. Attempts to
    prevent Russian ships from entering the local waters will lead to
    a dangerous confrontation or Georgia will have to cry uncle.
    Sesiashvili said the international community alone could settle
    the issue.

  • Russia to stop Georgian border guards from detaining ships in ‘Abkhaz waters’

    Russia to stop Georgian border guards from detaining ships in ‘Abkhaz waters’

    RIA-Novosti

    Moscow, 28 August: The Russian FSB (Federal Security Service) Coastguard, together with the Abkhaz border guards, will ensure the security of vessels entering Abkhaz territorial waters against their detention by Georgia. In part this is being done as part of the preparations for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the head of the border guard department – deputy head of the Russian FSB Border Guard Service, Lt-Gen Yevgeniy Inchin, told RIA Novosti on Friday (28 August).

    Georgia views Abkhazia as part of its territory and regards the delivery of cargo to Abkhazia by sea without Tbilisi’s permission as breach of the country’s legislation. Since the start of 2009 Georgia’s coastguard has detained 23 vessels in Abkhaz waters for various violations. Four of them were detained for the violation of the rules for entering waters of “occupied territories”.

    “At sea they are quite aggressive. Georgia regards entry into Abkhazia’s territorial waters as basis for taking various measures against vessels sailing under third countries’ flags, including measures of judicial nature,” said Inchin.

    In his words, the agreement between the Russian Federation and Abkhazia on border protection envisages taking joint action to ensure security in Abkhazia’s territorial waters.

    Asked whether Russian FSB’s coastguard will deprive the Georgian side of the ability to detain vessels sailing to and from Abkhazia Inchin said: “The FSB’s border guard department for Abkhazia has a group of boats which will be addressing this task, that is to say ensuring the untouchability (of vessels).”

    “Trust me, they will be doing this in an efficient and productive manner, as the ‘factor of Sochi’ and the forthcoming Olympic Games is in this case the determining one. All of this will happen, in the near future. At present we need to create all the conditions for this,” the FSB general said.

    Abkhaz border guards too will have border guard boats. They will be addressing the tasks relating to ensuring security in the water zone together with their colleagues from Russia, he added.

    “The tasks aren’t easy, but we will fulfil them,” he said. (Passage omitted: RIA recalls recent detention)

    (Interfax news agency quoted the head of the border guard squad of Abkhazia’s state security service, Zurab Marghania, as saying: “At present the Russian and Abkhaz border services are drawing up a joint action plan for the prevention of the Georgian border guards’ pirate-like actions in the Black Sea.”)

  • Turkish Company Says Abkhaz Risks Too High

    Turkish Company Says Abkhaz Risks Too High

    24 August 2009

    Reuters

    ISTANBUL —The Turkish operator of a tanker that was seized by Georgian authorities for delivering fuel to breakaway Abkhazia said Friday that he had given up the idea of sending any further supplies to the Black Sea territory.

    Georgia has passed legislation that forbids commercial traffic heading to Abkhazia in an attempt to isolate the territory, which was recognized by Moscow as independent after a five-day war between Georgia and Russia last August.

    Abkhazia has threatened a “proportionate response” to the Georgian blockade, which it says is aimed at suffocating it. The operator’s statements suggested that Tbilisi’s actions might be working.

    “The risks are too high now. We take cargo from one place to another, legally, and we don’t want to deal with illegal actions such as these,” said Huseyin San, general manager of the tanker operator Densa, whose company had been making regular trips to the Abkhaz port of Sukhumi to deliver fuel.

    Georgia says the tanker was picked up in Georgian territorial waters, but San said Georgia had intercepted it in international waters off Turkey before taking it to the Georgian port of Poti.

    San said the Georgian authorities had made no announcement of their intention before the seizure, which meant that they might have breached the ship’s right to pass freely through international waters.

    Under Georgian law, foreigners risk prosecution if they enter Abkhazia or another breakaway region, South Ossetia, without permission from Tbilisi.

    Some Abkhaz officials say the policy is simply pushing Abkhazia closer to Russia, which already controls Abkhazia’s borders and patrols its coastline.

    Abkhazia’s economy minister, Kristina Ozgan, said Thursday that Abkhazia would import 500 tons of diesel from Russia to compensate for the tanker’s detention.

    Georgia said Friday that the fate of the ship, its cargo and crew were in the hands of the courts. Local media reports have suggested that the cargo could be confiscated and auctioned.

    San says he will open an international court case citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea if authorities try to unload the ship and sell its $3 million to $4 million worth of gasoline and diesel.

    San, who said he had spoken with the captain, currently being held with a crew of 13 Turks and 4 Azeris in Batumi, said everyone who was on board the ship was well.

    The captain faces up to 24 years in prison if found guilty of smuggling and violating the Georgian ban on unauthorized economic activity.

    On Thursday, the Georgian coast guard said it had detained a vessel carrying scrap metal from Abkhazia. It was operating under a Cambodian flag.

  • Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    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