Dieter Boden expressed regret in connection with Vladislav Ardzinba's Death

March 11, SUKHUM, Abkhazia -- On March 11 in first half of the day Dieter Boden met with the President Sergey Bagapsh and the Vice-President Alexander Ankvab.

Within the framework of his informal visit the former Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict Dieter Boden delivered an open lecture on international problems on the Abkhaz State University invitation.

As to the meeting with the deputy Foreign Minister of Abkhazia Daur Kove, according to the press-service, the region’s urgent problems were discussed during the meeting.

Mr. Boden said that, despite his primary activity as a scientist-teacher, he continued taking an interest in the region’s destiny and watched closely the processes on the Southern Caucasus.

Touching upon the issue of the Geneva discussions, Mr. Boden said that in spite of the fact that little progress had been yet achieved in the course of the discussions; nevertheless, the Geneva format remained the most important forum to discuss common problems. “In spite of the fact that each participant of the Geneva discussions aims at nonrenewal of hostilities, all parties adhere to their vision of the problem resolution”, the deputy Foreign Minister declared.

The MFA international department head Lana Agrba said that the main goal of the Geneva consultations was to sign an agreement on the non-use of force, and this document must become the basic legal guarantor of stability in the region.

Mr. Boden said that forming a legal foundation for strengthening relations between the parties it was also important to take into consideration the agreements that had been concluded earlier. It was also mentioned that international guarantors continued to play an important role in strengthening trust.

Mr. Boden was also interested in the situation in the Kodori Valley.

The international department chief said that ICRC continued to render humanitarian aid to the valley’s residents.

Daur Kove stressed that it was very important for the Abkhaz society to maintain relations with Europe in cultural, educational and academic spheres. “Solving a problem connected with the destiny of Abkhazia, it is also important to listen to the Abkhaz side’s opinion”, the deputy Minister said, discussing the cases when citizens of Abkhazia had been refused Schengen visas. Mr. Boden also stressed the importance of solving daily problems while the political settlement was still being delayed.

Discussing the recent document on the problem resolution prepared by Georgia, Dieter Boden said that, despite some unacceptable wordings, the document, nevertheless, contained some interesting remarks. Daur Kove emphasized that the parties’ political will continued to remain an important component of establishing solid relations between the conflicting parties. Until there’s no will, no such documents will help reestablish trust.

Closing the meeting, Mr. Boden pointed to the importance of such meetings which allow to get to know the daily problems and the conflict parties’ opinion in detail, as well as to give corresponding information to other people and institutions interested in resolving the region’s main problems.

Source: Abkhazia Gov.

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We should rely not only on aid from outside but also on our own resources - Sergey Bagapsh

March 2, 2010 - SUKHUM, ABKHAZIA -- “We should rely not only on aid from outside but, first of all, on our own resources”, the President Sergey Bagapsh said at the new Cabinet’s first session which was held on Tuesday, March 2. The head of the state congratulated all on their appointment and wished them success.

According to Bagapsh, increase of efficiency of state administration bodies, heads of city and district administrations must become the Cabinet’s and the country leadership’s priority.

“You are the people with whom we have been already working for five years. During this time you have developed as specialists. I don’t like to throw away specialists. Over the past years we all had to close gaps in the legislation and the budget. Today we are on a new stage of development, I ask you to take it into consideration”, the president said, addressing members of the government.

Sergey Bagapsh gave ministers and vice PMs in charge of them a month to prepare "serious, well-founded plans for the development of the ministries”. “First of all, it is a question of the Ministries of Finance, Economy, Taxes and Tax collection”, the President said, adding that all members of the government should give paramount importance to the development of the national economy.

The head of the state drew members of the government’s attention to the necessity to develop the sphere of production. “Re-export, transport infrastructure, resorts - all this is very important, but, first of all, we should develop production and the agrarian sector”, Bagapsh said.

He stressed inadmissibility of ignoring the development of the agrarian sector and charged the Minister of Agriculture Jury Akaba to tackle the matter of agriculture reform in real earnest.

“The development of agriculture will take investments, considerable cash recourses. We are ready to spend a part of the Privatization fund means on complex development of agriculture. If we don’t develop agriculture, we will ruin the development of the national economy”, the President said.

At the session it was also a question of the necessity to reform the judicial branch of power, to improve courts’ working conditions, to increase judges’ salary and authority, to solve personnel problems, to develop legislation, to work out subordinate legislation in addition to the laws passed by the Parliament.

The President also placed emphasis on the issues of education, training of pedagogical personnel, and expansion of the kindergartens system. According to him, the Ministry of Education should think of opening new special, technical education establishments to train specialists for different spheres of economy.

“We need the most rigid economy in all”, he said addressing the vice PM, the Finance Minister Beslan Kubrava.

“Distribution of money must be under the rigid control of the Prime Minister. I will too keep an eye on it”, Sergey Bagapsh promised.

Touching upon the issue of rendering assistance to veterans who need treatment, he said: “We must render assistance to veterans; however money should be transferred to a medical institution instead of handing it”.

Bagapsh promised to henceforth give particular attention to security agencies. He expressed discontent with the conditions military men serve and live in.

The head of the state charged the Minister of Internal Affairs Otar Khetsia “to revise the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, allocation of responsibilities, to change the work style for the better”. “Efficiency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and criminality preventive measures are the most important thing”, Bagapsh said.

Sergey Bagapsh urged members of the government to employ more actively young, competent specialists, to appoint them deputy ministers.

“I have no doubts about decency and honesty of ministers”, Bagapsh said. At the same time he demanded “to introduce order among your employees". "Those who want to make big money, let them go to business”, he said.

Addressing journalists, the head of the state said that it should be done so that the voice of Abkhazia be heard more in the world.

According to the President, some changes should be made to the law on the mass-media providing for journalists’ responsibility for published materials.

Source: Abkhazia Gov.

National Card Payment System to be Created in Abkhazia

March 1, 2010 - SUKHUM, ABKHAZIA -- According to a decree issued by the President Sergey Bagapsh, the National card payment system will be created in Abkhazia.

“In an effort to coordinate and regulate settlement relations with the use of cards, and to meet the requirements of the population of the Republic of Abkhazia in modern bank products and services, to increase inclusion of physical persons in non-cash payments and to create the payment infrastructure in the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia”, the National bank of the Republic of Abkhazia is charged to:

1)create the National card payment system (including cards of international payment systems) till December, 2010;

2)give basic provisions of functioning of the National card payment system, basic provisions of rules and standards of card payments till June 1, 2010;

3) develop a bill of the Republic Abkhazia “About the use of cards in the Republic of Abkhazia” till July 1.

Source: Abkhazia Gov.

New Publication: ''Abkhaz: A Comprehensive Self-Tutor'' by George Hewitt‏

''Abkhaz: A Comprehensive Self-Tutor'' by George Hewitt

LINCOM Europa Academic Publications

LSG 03: Abkhaz

A Comprehensive Self-Tutor

George Hewitt
SOAS, University of London

Abkhaz belongs to the small North West Caucasian language-family, whose other members are the various Circassian dialects and Ubykh, extinct since 1992. It is spoken by (a) upto 100,000 Abkhazians either in the historical homeland of the Republic of Abkhazia, located in north-west Transcaucasia, or in Russia, and (b) an indeterminate number of members of the diaspora-communities, which have been centred on Turkey since the great exodus from Abkhazia following Russia's conquest of the North Caucasus in 1864; ethnic Abkhazians in Turkey number between 300,000 and half a million, and smaller communities are found elsewhere in the Near East (plus Europe and America). Each member of the language-family is characterised by (i) large consonantal phoneme-inventories coupled with minimal vowel-systems, (ii) morphs often consisting of just a consonant(-complex) ± vowel, and (iii) extreme polysynthetic verbal complexes, all of which combine to present the learner/speaker with considerable challenges.Serious attempts to provide Abkhaz (and Circassian) with scripts only began in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th century, by which date all speakers of Ubykh had migrated to the Ottoman Empire (settling in regions of today’s Turkey).

Since that time, a number of orthographies have been used for Abkhaz. The current, Cyrillic-based standard in Abkhazia was devised (by a committee!) after Stalin died (1953), though a slight spelling reform was introduced in the late 1990s to regularise the marking of the feature of labialisation. The most divergent Abkhaz dialect, Abaza, is spoken in the actual North West Caucasus (Russia), where it has its own alphabet. Whilst grammatical sketches and grammars of Abkhaz designed for linguists exist in a variety of languages (including my own grammar ‘Lingua Descriptive Studies 2: Abkhaz’, originally published in 1979, though it was most recently reprinted), this is the first attempt to produce a comprehensive, graded self-tutor. It is based on the literary dialect, Abzhywa, which is one of only two dialects remaining in the ancestral territory (the other being Bzyp). The work consists of: Introduction, 19 explanatory chapters with exercises plus one chapter of texts, an Appendix dealing with mathematical terms, Key to the exercises, and a grammatical Summary.

ISBN 9783895866708. LINCOM Student Grammars 03. 332pp. 2010.

http://tiny.cc/ACemU

http://www.lincom.eu/

Interview with Nadir Bitiev, Advisor to the President of Abkhazia

Bruce Talley (http://www.brucetalley.com/) interviewed with Nadir Bitiev, an advisor to Abkhazia's President Sergei Bagapsh, on November 20, 2009 in Sukhum, Abkhazia. Mr. Bitiev spoke about the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia, Abkhazia's war with Georgia in 1992-93 and subsequent independence and the growth in tourism in the post-conflict environment.

Part 1


Part 2

Hitler calls on Georgians to win back Abkhazia‏

December 25, 2009 - by Kirill Kolodin (Tbilisi) - Izvestiya

The television channel “Sakartvelo” aired a remarkably creative video that, in theory at least, should entice young people to join the army. The video does not particularly have any distinguishing special effects; in it, some cheerful young men are heading from a recruiting station to the army headquarters. As they enter through the welcoming, swung-open doors, it seems to be the perfect place for a slogan such as: “Welcome to the army, son!” But instead, a quote by Adolf Hitler appears on television screens.

“We once and for all must understand that we will never be able to regain the lost territory with prayers, which have become a formality, nor with hopes in the League of Nations, but with the strength of our weapons. Adolf Hitler. 1932.” These subtitles are accompanied by a well-performed voiceover – perhaps to make it more convincing.Perhaps only the creators of the video know why the Fuhrer needed to be included in the propaganda campaign – especially since there is already an abundance of similar banal expressions that could be found in the repertoires of many politicians and military commanders. Thus, there was absolutely no need to include Hitler as the main “revenge expert.”

The misstep of the political strategists is clear. A television campaign was being created based on the approval of an official representative of Georgia’s Ministry of Defense and according to the example of the NATO countries. But it is hard to imagine that “in order to promote the military,” Americans, the English, the French and especially the Germans would use “Mein Kapf” or other classical writings of the Fuhrer.

It is not clear as to how long the scandalous clip has been on the air. The television company does not have a wide audience, despite the fact that it is broadcast over the entire country. In April 2007, Sakartvelo began cooperating with the military based on the “Law on State Procurement,” and began operating in September of the same year.

Prior to that, Channel 33, which broadcasts Sakartvelo, belonged to the opposition television company of Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikhail Saakashvili, 202. According to the latest available information, currently Sakartvelo is owned by Denal Union. In November 2009, the non-governmental organization Transparency International called the company “mysterious” in one of its reports.

While it is just a coincidence, Georgian activists of the Center for Human Rights posted the clip on their website – http://www.hridc.tv/ and http://humanrights.ge/ – almost immediately after the clip on the destruction of the Memorial of Glory in Kutaisi. The clip was posted on the eve of the Georgian government’s presentation of the “State Strategy in Relation to the Occupied Territories,” according to which Georgia’s leadership plans to resolve the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflicts only thought peaceful means.

- Read this article on newspaper's website (in Russian)

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UNPO - Abkhazia President Bagapsh Re-elected

Dec. 15 - UNPO welcomes the news that President Sergei V. Bagapsh of Abkhazia has been re-elected for a second term as initial exit polls released on Sunday (13th December) indicated that Mr Bagapsh had won approximately 60% of the popular vote.

It was estimated that the turnout for Saturday’s vote (12th December) was 73%. There were 174 polling stations within the thirty-five regions of Abkhazia and the election was overseen by the Abkhaz Central Election Commission (TsIK) chaired by Mr. Batal Tabagua. Mr. Bagapsh’s closest rival among four other candidates, Raul Khajimba, polled with 15.4 percent of the popular vote.

Mr Bagapsh has already served one term as president following the contentious 2004 election which was resolved through a power-sharing agreement. He resigned in November 2009, following constitutional rules, to stand in the 2009 presidential elections. The election result was decided by simple majority voting (SMV) in which the highest polling candidate had to obtain over 50% of votes to be elected as president. Since Mr. Bagapsh was able to exceed such a proportion, ruling out a second round of voting.

UNPO believes this result is another positive step in the democratic development of Abkhazia and the Caucasus region. Since joining UNPO in 1992 to campaign for greater self-determination and international recognition, Abkhazia has been actively engaged in supporting fellow UNPO members in their campaigns. The 2009 Presidential Election gives to the region a valuable example of democracy in action and to the international community a clear demonstration of Abkhazia’s commitment to democratic values.

Below is a copy of the letter of Congratulations sent to Sergey Bagapsh from UNPO General Secretary, Marino Busdachin

The Hague, 14 December 2009

Your Excellency,

On behalf of the membership of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) I would like to congratulate you on your re-election by the overwhelming majority of Abkhaz for another term in office as President of the Republic of Abkhazia.

UNPO followed the elections closely and welcomes what is another positive chapter in Abkhazia’s democratic development and consolidation. We believe the election and its result represents an important step for the whole Caucasus region and a vindication of the multi-vector foreign policy that you have pursued to benefit of Abkhazia over your past term in office.

It is almost two decades since Abkhazia joined the UNPO, and over the coming months we look forward to deepening the strong bonds that exist between Sukhum and UNPO members throughout the world. The UNPO therefore reaffirms its support to Abkhazia’s people and their right to self-determination and international recognition.

We stand ready to offer your office and the Republic of Abkhazia every possible support in the weeks leading to your inauguration and the years to follow.

Yours sincerely,

Marino Busdachin
General Secretary

• UNPO