Georgia, Abkhazia sign accord cease-fire statement, agree on

Georgia, Abkhazia sign accord cease-fire statement, agree on refugees

MOSCOW (AFP): Georgia and its breakaway autonomous republic of Abkhazia signed yesterday a cease-fire statement and an agreement for the return of Georgian refugees driven out of Abkhazia late last year.

ITAR-TASS news agency said the agreements were signed in Moscow in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The two sides also signed a statement providing for measures to settle their 18-month dispute, the agency said.

In Tbilisi Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said the Moscow accords were "the most we could manage so far, and the minimum that was necessary for the sending of United Nations troops to Abkhazia."

Georgia had given way to the Abkhazian demand that Georgians who had taken part in the fighting, representing around two percent of the 250,000 refugees, be barred from returning, Shevardnadze said on Georgian radio.

A foreign ministry spokesman in Tbilisi said Georgia had "done everything possible and accepted compromises to permit the arrival in Abkhazia of UN peacekeeping troops.

UN representatives in the Georgian capital were still waiting Monday for further details regarding the accords signed in Moscow, but Taslimur Rahman, head of operations by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in the war-ravaged republic, said the return and reintegration of the refugees "will depend on the signing of a political agreement."

The return would take "more than a few months," he told AFP.

Konstantin Zatulin, president of the Russian parliamentary commission for affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States, of which Georgia has been a member since last summer, said the accords were "a very positive fact" which should avoid the conflict degenerating into another war.

Suit both sides

The accords "suit both sides" because they confirm Georgian sovereignty over the whole of its territory while granting a high degree of autonomy to Abkhazia, he said, as reported by ITAR- TASS.

Analysts said it would take some time to reach a political settlement given that the Georgian parliament decided a month ago to dissolve the parliament in Abkhazia.

Although there has been no major fighting since late last year, clashes between Georgian troops and Abkhazian separatists erupted again on March 25.

Talks followed in Moscow last week mediated by Kozyrev's deputy Boris Pastukhov and attended by UN officials.

The Georgian parliament was meeting in closed session yesterday to discuss the situation in Abkhazia.

The prevailing reaction in Tbilisi to the Moscow accords was that given the present instability in the west of the republic they were the best that could be hoped for at present.

Meanwhile the Georgian defense ministry said separatists had shelled areas on the Georgian side of the River Inguri, using artillery and a tank, state radio said in a report monitored by the BBC in London. It did not say when the shelling occurred.