Internationally backed peace talks between Georgia and Russia broke down on the first day on Wednesday with the rivals, who fought a war in August, blaming each other for the failure to even enter the same room.
“There were two separate meetings, the Russians and the Abkhazians [in one] and the Georgians in another,” Sergei Shamba, foreign minister of the pro-Russian separatist region of Abkhazia, told journalists.
The talks would have been the first time representatives of the two sides have held direct negotiations since the five-day war after Russia thwarted a Georgian assault to retake its breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Russia has kept troops in South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, and recognizes both as independent states.
Pierre Morel, an official for the EU, which organized the talks with the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, blamed “procedural difficulties” for the quick suspension of the negotiations.
Georgia said that Russia had refused to meet its delegation.
“It’s regrettable that the Russian Federation has put the process from the very beginning under severe constraints,” Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, head of Georgia’s delegation, told journalists.
Russia would not take part in any further talks with Georgia if representatives from South Ossetia and Abkhazia were not invited, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said.
The US injected a third element to the breakdown, with its head of delegation Daniel Fried saying that it was the South Ossetians and Abkhazians who failed to exhibit a “constructive spirit” to keep talks going.
“Unfortunately ... the de facto authorities of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who were present at the meeting, I’m sorry to say did not exhibit such a constructive spirit — they chose instead to walk out of the informational session,” he said.
Meanwhile, EU leaders were set to delay yesterday a decision on when to restart talks with Russia on a stalled partnership pact, suspended after Russia’s incursion into Georgia in August, a draft statement showed.
The draft, due to be approved by leaders at the final session of a two-day summit, welcomed the withdrawal of Russian troops from buffer zones in Georgia, but fell short of saying that partnership talks could start again.
“The European Council is asking the [European] Commission and the Council [of foreign ministers] to continue a full in-depth evaluation of EU-Russia relations with a view to the forthcoming [EU-Russia] summit, scheduled to take place in Nice on Nov. 14,” said the final draft statement.
“It will be taken into account in the further negotiations for a new Partnership Agreement with Russia,” the EU draft statement said.
An earlier version had said that talks would resume next month, but EU President France failed to convince all its partners to agree to this.
In related news, the UN’s highest court ordered Russia and Georgia to ensure the security of all ethnic groups in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and adjacent areas of Georgia.
In a provisional ruling on a lawsuit filed by Georgia that alleged human rights violations by Russia in the region, the International Court of Justice said Georgia and Russia must refrain from sponsoring any act of racial discrimination.
The 15-judge tribunal ruled with eight votes to seven in favor of ordering both parties to do all in their power to ensure the security of persons, freedom of movement and the protection of refugees’ property. It also said Georgia and Russia must allow humanitarian aid to reach local populations.
The court ruled it had jurisdiction to order the measures and ordered both parties to inform it of their compliance.
But Moscow dismissed the court’s jurisdiction.
“We intend to continue to prove that the court has no jurisdiction in this case at the next stage of the proceedings,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on its Web site.
The UN court said that while the Georgian population in the conflict areas remains vulnerable, given the unstable situation and ongoing tension in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and adjacent areas in Georgia, the ethnic Ossetian and Abkhazian populations also remain vulnerable.
“While the problems of the refugees and internally displaced persons in this region are currently being addressed, they have not been resolved in their entirety,” the court said.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.