SAINT PETERSBURG (AFP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday brushed off foreign mediation over Georgia's separatist Abkhazia region, as EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited the disputed territory.
Medvedev also said Georgia should sign a pact of non-aggression with Abkhazia and reverse what Russia claims is a Georgian troop build-up close to the rebel region.
Faced with his biggest foreign policy challenge since coming to power on May 7, Medvedev met with the pro-Western Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, who earlier warned there was a risk of war with Russia.
Speaking at the start of the meeting at a regional summit of ex-Soviet nations in Saint Petersburg, Medvedev referred to Western concerns and said: "I think we can sort out our relations by ourselves."
The United States and NATO have both strongly criticised a decision by Russia, announced last week, to send additional troops to Abkhazia as part of a wider effort to increase Moscow's support for the rebel region.
Medvedev's message was underlined by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said Russia saw no need for foreign mediation. "The key to the solution is direct negotiations between the parties," Lavrov told journalists.
"The ball is on the Georgian side," Lavrov said, referring to Russia's insistence that Georgia respect its international obligations in the volatile conflict zone on the Black Sea coast.
The meeting "was friendly and positive in tone," Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said in a statement.
However, "no progress was made on substantive issues" including "withdrawal of illegally deployed Russian troops, immediate cessation of ongoing construction of military infrastructure" and reversal of Russia's move to set up official ties with Abkhazia, the statement added.
Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s in a conflict that killed several thousand people and prompted hundreds of thousands of Georgians to flee. Russia has accused Georgia of planning to reconquer the region.
Behind the Abkhazia dispute lie deep tensions over Georgia's bid to join NATO, which Russia considers an encroachment on its sphere of influence.
NATO membership for Georgia would lead to "a very, very negative spiral of confrontation in Abkhazia," Lavrov said.
Tensions have escalated in Abkhazia in recent weeks, with a particularly bitter row over Georgian allegations that a Russian fighter jet shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane in April -- a claim backed up by a UN report.
Ahead of Friday's meeting, Saakashvili said he would urge Medvedev to revoke an order signed by his predecessor Vladimir Putin formalising economic links between Russia and Abkhazia in April.
Coinciding with Friday's meeting in Saint Petersburg, the European Union's top foreign policy official, Solana, made a visit to the heart of the conflict, meeting Abkhaz leaders in their main city of Sukhumi.
Solana said he wanted the EU to get more involved in mediating the conflict.
The EU "wants to participate more deeply in settling the conflict," Solana said in comments translated into Russian, adding however that there was no question of excluding Russia from negotiations.
Medvedev also held talks on Friday with other leaders at the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose grouping of 12 former Soviet republics traditionally dominated by Moscow.
In talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, another pro-Western leader, Medvedev said Ukraine should not rush to expel the Russian navy from its base in the southern Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.
The move would be "unilateral" action, Lavrov quoted Medvedev as saying.
Medvedev also warned that Russia would be forced to charge Ukraine double the present amount it pays for gas from next year, saying the move was not political and a result of Central Asian gas exporters raising their prices.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
