Leadership of Abkhazia hope for the possibility of further partner cooperation with the United Nations Organization, may be on a new basis already - Sergey Shamba
SUKHUM -- The Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergey Shamba sent a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon with gratitude for the invaluable contribution made by the UN Observer Mission in the process of promoting stability and security in the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia.
“In connection with the cease of the UN Mission’s activity in the territory of Abkhazia allow me to express gratitude for the work carried out and the support rendered to our Republic during its hard period. The UN Observer Mission has made an invaluable contribution to the process of promoting stability and security in the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia. The Mission’s employees, frequently losing their own lives, throughout the period of the peace-making operation in Abkhazia since 1993 have carried out the duties on arranging negotiations and promoting peace in the region with honor and dignity”, the letter of the Minister says.
“In 2001, as a result of a periodic armed provocation of the Georgian party, the UN Mission’s helicopter in which 6 employees of the Organization were lost has been brought down in the territory of Abkhazia. These victims will be never forgotten by the people of Abkhazia”, Sergey Shamba assured the Secretary General of the United Nations.
The head of the foreign policy department of Abkhazia evaluated the role of the United Nations “in promoting peace and security” in the region and the world as a whole.
Abkhazia always supported preservation of the UN Observer Mission in its territory, however, according to Shamba, “in connection with military aggression of Georgia against South Ossetia in August, 2008 and the subsequent withdrawal of Georgia from the Moscow agreement of May 14, 1994, the former UN Mission’s mandate was not consistent with the real state of affairs”.
“There was an exigency to revise the Mission’s mandate. The Abkhaz party, following the desire to preserve the Mission’s presence, realised all the complexity of the situation and offered different compromises. However, some countries members of the Security Council decided not to take into consideration the opinion of the Abkhaz party and continued to insist on extension of the former UN Mission’s mandate, referring to the resolution 1808 adopted in April 2008, before the armed aggression of Georgia which changed the real situation in the region”, the letter reads.
Shamba is certain that “the attempt to revise the UN Mission’s mandate, unfortunately, failed because of a biased position of some countries which have shown disrespect for the fundamental, basic principle, being a key one in the United Nations Organization Charter, namely a right of the people to self-determination”.
“We have repeatedly declared that our relations with the United Nations Organization within the frameworks of the existing mandate are unacceptable any longer. In the light of recognitions of our independence the United Nations Mission could not be considered as the UN Mission in Georgia any longer, it contradicted simple logic. We fairly believed that the United Nations Mission, carrying out the activity, should be neutral, equidistant and unbiased”, the letter says.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia considers the draft resolution offered by the UN Security Council to be “inadequate to the current situation and absolutely unacceptable for the Abkhaz party”. “Actually it would be aimed at denying the existence of Abkhazia as a state, and, as we have repeatedly declared, we could not agree on it under any circumstances”, Shamba underlined.
Shamba once again confirmed that “the leadership of Abkhazia hope for the possibility of further partner cooperation with the United Nations Organization, may be on a new basis already”.