There are no primary or secondary participants in Geneva Discussions, there no Co-Chair institute, all the participants have equal status, said the Plenipotentiary for Post-Conflict Settlement Boris Chochiev commenting on the decision of the Abkhaz side to suspend its participation in Geneva Discussions on Security in the Caucasus.
"Our position is in the following. We are supporting the Abkhaz side in its decision to suspend the participation in the discussions, they do it right. At the same time, we believe that if there is no new proposal on non-use of force paper by the next visit of the Co-Chairs on 12 July, there will be no new round of discussions. We will officially address to all the side to jointly start the settlement of many issues, including the organizational ones", said Chochiev.
He underlined that starting from the 6th round of discussions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia had repeatedly stated that Geneva discussions were stalemated. "The Medvedev-Sarkozy agreement confirmed the necessity to have international discussions. It is illegitimate that representatives of the UN, OSCE and the EU are co-chairing the discussions, and I dare call them impostors at one of the meetings. All participants to Geneva discussions have equal status and bear equal responsibility", reminded Chochiev.
According to him, initially there were many unclear issues, which should have been addressed at the first meetings.
"There were more uncoordinated issues and we decided to wait. At the first meeting, representatives of the UN, OSCE and EU tried to overtake the leading role. At the 10th round, when they saw that they had nothing to answer to many of our questions, they were seeking for some other proposals. The first attempt was made by the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tina Kaidenau, and at the 11th round, the U.S. deputy Secretary of State Phillip Gordon appeared. Having seen the absence of any results, he decided to save them and stated that there would be no agreements signed. As always, the States had their prepared plan – to destroy everything and blame somebody in that, and this somebody could be South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They understand that without signing the non-use of force agreement and with the humanitarian issues unsettled, we cannot expect anything and we will not be there", underlined the plenipotentiary. According to him, Geneva discussions are not needed, and the fact that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are creating artificial problems is a part of the plan.
"They will not be able to make us bury Geneva discussions. Throughout the 11 rounds of discussions, the international organizations could not do anything. We will be going back to the initial positions: decide on who will be participating, what will be the status of the participants, what will be the status of the participants, what will the protocol format and the implementation of taken decisions. They did not want to hear about that, but we have a good moment now", said Chochiev. "I would not say that only the Co-Chairs are to be blamed. There is not Co-Chairs' institution at the discussions. There are participants, who have equal status. The discussions are needed, but, the problems is that the Co-Chairs are inefficient in their work."
Chochiev reported that as he learnt from certain sources, the Co-Chairs are going to have their meeting on 30 June. "There is still some time until 12 July, and we will demand from them to come here with a concrete proposal. If they do not agree, we will have to address the presidents of the Russian Federation and France to inform that owing to the representatives of international organizations, the forma of Geneva discussions is breaking down. We have been living without Geneva Discussion and we will survive without them. But I believe that there is a necessity to maintain a contact with international organizations and representatives of Georgia within the frameworks of the discussions and Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms", concluded Boris Chochiev.
