U.N. RESOLUTION ON ABKHAZIA SHOWS WHO’S WHO ON ETHNIC CLEANSING
By Vladimir Socor
Eurasia Daily Monitor
May 16 2008
DC
On May 15 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Georgian
resolution recognizing the right of expellees to return to Georgia’s
Abkhazia region. The voting was 14 countries in favor, 11 against,
and 105 abstaining, with another 63 countries not voting. Adoption of
the resolution puts the General Assembly on record as calling for a
reversal of ethnic cleansing in the case of Abkhazia and potentially
further afield. The arithmetic of the vote, however, shows feeble
international support for pursuing the issue. Russia and Armenia led
the opposition to the resolution.
"Deploring practices of arbitrary forced displacement [such as
the] expulsion of hundreds of thousands of persons from Abkhazia,
Georgia," the resolution cites several times "the reports of ‘ethnic
cleansing’" from that region since 1994. The resolution enshrined for
the first time a set of principles that Georgia and its supporters
had long advocated as a basis for resolving this conflict. First,
it "recognizes the right of return of all refugees and internally
displaced persons and their descendants, regardless of ethnicity,
to Abkhazia, Georgia." Second, it "emphasizes the importance of
preserving the property rights of refugees and internally displaced
persons … and calls upon all member states [read: Russia] to deter
persons under their jurisdiction from obtaining property in Abkhazia,
Georgia, in violation of the rights of refugees." And third, it
"underlines the urgent need for a rapid development of a timetable
to ensure the prompt voluntary return of all refugees and internally
displaced persons to their homes."
Concurrently "emphasizing that the rights of the Abkhaz population have
to be protected and guaranteed," a point included in Georgia’s draft
from the outset, the resolution "requests" the UN Secretary-General
to report comprehensively on the implementation of this resolution
at next year’s session of the General Assembly.
In the debate before the vote, Georgia’s UN envoy Irakli Alasania
reminded the Assembly of the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands
of people of Georgian and other ethnicities from Abkhazia, their
growing despair, and the unlawful seizure of the homes and property
they had to leave behind. Alluding to Russia’s role, he said that
the conflict was an "example of how externally generated conflicts
have been maintained in a frozen situation to subdue the people of
Georgia." He reaffirmed Georgia’s proposals for autonomy and direct
talks with the de facto Abkhaz authorities.
The European Union failed to adopt a common position. Nine member
countries, including eight new ones and Sweden, joined the United
States to vote for the Georgian-proposed resolution. That European
group coincides approximately with the New Group of Friends of Georgia,
which has come into its own since 2007. Up to 17 EU member countries
(all the "old" ones except Sweden) abstained from voting. Speaking
for those countries, Germany, France, and Italy claimed that the UN
Security Council traditionally dealt with this conflict, thus implying
that a General Assembly debate was redundant.
Beyond procedural arguments, however, Germany objected to the
resolution’s content. It claimed that the document "ignored many
other aspects of the situation," i.e., that it did not reflect
Russian views. Germany spoke in its capacity as chair of the UN
Secretary-General’s Group of Friends of Georgia (Russia, the United
States, Britain, France, and Germany). This group operates (when
it does at all) based on consensus with Russia, thereby making it
dysfunctional, while in this case providing Germany with an excuse
to take the position it does.
Turkey also abstained, while calling on "all parties to pursue a
peaceful resolution" and expressing its readiness "to assist in
that effort." Indeed Turkey, home to significant Abkhaz and related
Circassian communities, seems well-placed for a mediating role in
Abkhazia. Nevertheless, for many years Turkey has passed up this
opportunity to gain regional influence. All of the abstaining countries
that spoke in this debate endorsed Georgia’s territorial integrity,
and some of them paid lip service to the expellees’ right of return;
but they fell short of even a symbolic vote for the resolution.
Azerbaijan and Ukraine strongly supported the resolution. Azerbaijan
implicitly drew a parallel between the ethnic cleansing from Abkhazia
and from parts of Azerbaijan’s own territory. Deploring any acceptance
of ethnic cleansing in the South Caucasus, it called for the refugees’
return to their homes as an indispensable basis for resolving the
conflicts. For its part, Ukraine traced the conflict in Abkhazia to
its roots in Soviet policies; "the Russian Federation continued that
notorious tradition by inserting separatism into the GUAM region."
Moldova, the other member of the GUAM group (Georgia, Ukraine,
Azerbaijan, Moldova) broke ranks in abstaining from the vote. The
Moldovan president and government hope to earn Russia’s goodwill for
a resolution of the Transnistria conflict sometime in 2008, ahead of
Moldova’s elections. Moldova could have chosen to be absent from the
vote (as did the U.S.-protected governments of Iraq and Afghanistan
in deserting the United States on this vote), but chose to abstain
in an explicit bow to Russia.
Russia criticized the resolution for "destabilizing UN activities
in settling the conflict" and "leading to a deterioration of
Georgian-Abkhaz relations," without explaining these assertions. It
described the problem as one between Georgia and Abkhazia, not between
Georgia and Russia, a claim that seeks to put an Abkhaz face on the
Russian military’s 1994 ethnic cleansing operation in Abkhazia. And
it made the refugees’ return conditional on a comprehensive political
resolution of the conflict, even as Moscow stonewalls any resolution
that would not put Russia in control.
Joining with Russia to excuse ethnic cleansing was an unusual
constellation of countries: Armenia, Belarus, North Korea, India,
Iran, Myanmar, Serbia, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela. Some of these
have themselves been involved in ethnic cleansing operations; some
of them side habitually with Russia; and some of them qualify on
both counts. From the last group, Armenia had campaigned against
inclusion of the resolution on the General Assembly’s agenda. Like
Russia, it clearly implied that the expellees’ return to their homes
was contingent on a political resolution acceptable to both sides or,
in other words, it should be left at the discretion of the cleansing
side. Armenia had also tried unsuccessfully to block discussion on
an Azerbaijani-drafted resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
which passed last year in the General Assembly (see EDM, March 18).
Georgia persists in seeking direct contact with Abkhaz authorities
parallel to its international activity. On May 12 Georgia’s U.N envoy
Alasania, who is also a negotiator on the Abkhazia conflict, held
talks in Sokhumi to present details of the Georgian government’s offer
of autonomy to Abkhaz leaders (United Nations General Assembly, 62nd
session: Plenary Meeting, May 15, 2008; General Assembly, "Protracted
Conflicts in the GUAM Area," May 15; Civil Georgia, May 15).