Interview: ‘NATO sent the wrong signal to Russia’

Russia is destabilising the breakaway region of Abkhazia because Moscow wants to divert Georgia from its NATO bid, Salome Samadashvili, the Georgian ambassador to NATO and the EU, told EURACTIV in an interview.

According to Samadashvili, who was a member of the Georgian Parliament before being appointed to Brussels in 2005, the current tensions and last week’s increase of the Russian military presence in Abkhazia are direct results of the failure of the Bucharest NATO summit in April (EURACTIV 02/04/08) to open the door to Georgia and Ukraine by granting them ‘Membership Action Plans’. 

Noting that the EU itself was divided over the issue, with some countries insisting that Tbilisi should first solve the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Samadashvili urged the bloc not to link the two subjects.

“Russia has made it a foreign policy priority to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO,” Ambassador Samadashvili said. Dismissing Russian accusations that Georgia is positioning troops close to Abkhazia, she nevertheless admitted that her country is using unmanned spy planes to survey the situation in the conflict zone. She insisted that the use of such drones is legitimate. 

Ambassador Samadashvili called on the EU to engage in talks on changing the format of peace negotiations concerning breakaway regions, saying that all the current formats are being monopolised by the Russian Federation. She said she expected the EU to be the “real objective broker” in the process. Though stopping short of calling for the deployment of EU peacekeepers, she stressed that the Russian peacekeepers currently present in Abkhazia could not be considered impartial. 

The ambassador concluded by saying Georgia expects the EU to introduce measures to counter Russia “with impact in real terms” rather than just issuing statements. “When Russia behaves like a hooligan in international relations, trying to see how far it can get away [with] violating standards of international law, I would expect the EU to send a very clear signal of what is acceptable behaviour by a strategic partner,” she said. 

To read the interview in full, please click here. 

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