UN General Assembly adopts Georgian resolution on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia objects

Today the UN General Assembly adopted a new Georgian draft resolution on Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The project, in spite of Russian calls not to support it in order not to spoil the situation with the Geneva discussions on Transcaucasia, has been approved by 62 countries. 16 countries opposed it, and more than half - 84 countries - abstained from voting.

However, although the resolution was prepared by Georgia, it is a recommendation and not a binding document; therefore its formulations are soft and relate only to particular questions. For example, it reflects the decision to include the issue of the long conflict in Georgia on the agenda for the next session of the UN General Assembly; it also focuses on the return of refugees and humanitarian aid for them.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's representative at the UN, describes the new document as "politicized product" written "out of the context of the contemporary geopolitical realities prevailing in the region." As Churkin notes, it is particularly important that the resolution speaks about Abkhazia and South Ossetia, just as it does about parts of Georgia and "does not take into account the existence of independent states in the region."

The Russian plenipotentiary to the UN also does not like Georgia's unwillingness to sign an agreement with the breakaway republics about the inapplicability of force, sharply contrasting with the country’s own calls to intensify the establishment of lasting peace in the framework of the Geneva discussions. The key omission, Churkin says, is that the representatives of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were not invited to the discussion on the situation in these republics.