Puppet administrations demand non-use of force treaty

After the US administration began to consistently state that Russia is occupying Georgian territory Moscow started to counterattack. Its puppet regimes are once more aggressively demanding that Georgia should sign a non-use of force treaty with them, threatening to leave the Geneva peace talks as a blackmailing tactic. The Geneva Co-Chairs have repeatedly confirmed that non-use of force is stipulated n the August 2008 ceasefire agreement, which Georgia has abided by and Russia not, and therefore no further such treaty is necessary. This concurs with Georgia's position that not only are the treaties unnecessary but it would be inappropriate to sign any such document with self-declared and almost entirely unrecognised 'states' rather than actual governments of actual nations.

The Geneva negotiations have been held since October 2008 and involve Georgia, Russia and mediators from the EU, UN, OSCE and USA. Moscow has done its best to get the puppet regimes included in the negotiations, and eventually a formula has been found in which representatives of these regimes and the legal, pro-Georgian administrations of these regions attend working groups. But as the Georgian saying goes the appetite comes during eating, so, having gained this concession the separatists demanded more loudly that Tbilisi sign a non-use of force agreement with its own territories of Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, thus indirectly recognising these puppet entities as legal bodies of equal status with itself.

Georgia repeats that the Medvedev-Sarkozy peace agreement includes a clause on the non-use of force by Georgia and Russia. The US administration also supports this point of view. However the separatist regimes, inspired by Moscow, are blackmailing the Geneva process by the demand for a new agreement. It is now unlikely that the 12th round of Geneva negotiations will be held on July 27 as scheduled and it will be postponed to some indefinite future date. By this the separatists are trying to make out that Georgia is disrupting the peace negotiations by refusing to sign a peace agreement. Rather, expecting a sovereign state to recognise its own regions as independent and refusing to talk about peace if it doesn't is an aggressive act entirely inappropriate to the context.

The Sokhumi and Tskhinvali puppet administrations are working together, their moves orchestrated by The Kremlin. Moscow is playing its “usual role”, pretending it is not a party to the conflict but merely another mediator while its marionettes conduct themselves as independent entities. It is now up to international organisations and Western countries to force Moscow to stop kidding and start conducting logical and serious negotiations. If it is not a party to the conflicts in the separatist regions, it can demonstrate this by withdrawing its soldiers from them immediately, renouncing its recognition of them and ceasing to bankroll the so called 'independent Governments' Moscow put there to begin with.