Georgia Clears Way for Russia's WTO Bid
Despite claims of success, Georgia does not seem to have gained much from talks.
Georgia Clears Way for Russia's WTO Bid
Despite claims of success, Georgia does not seem to have gained much from talks.
Precise details of how Georgia opened the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organisation, WTO, have yet to be revealed, but President Mikhail Saakashvili is already hailing it as a diplomatic coup.
Russia has wanted to join the WTO since the mid-Nineties, but it had first to agree terms with all 153 members of the trade grouping. That gave Georgia, a WTO member, the power to veto its entry or hold it up.
After the brief Russian-Georgian war of August 2008, Tbilisi broke off talks on the WTO issue and refused to facilitate Russia's entry.
One of the major sticking points concerned South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have been run by separatist administrations since conflicts in the early Nineties. After the 2008, Moscow formally recognised both entities as independent states.
Tbilisi made it a condition of Russia’s WTO accession that Georgian units should be deployed to guard the two entities’ borders with Russia, arguing that that is its state boundaries lie.
Western states side with Georgia’s claim to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But they also wanted Russia to come into the WTO, so they put massive pressure on Saakashvili to return to the negotiations.
Talks restarted in March, mediated by Switzerland, and have now resulted in a compromise deal in which a private firm appointed by the Swiss will monitor trade at crossing-points between Russia and Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Saakashvili hailed this as a triumph, arguing that, “For the first time since 1992-93, we have managed to ensure a constant flow of information on all goods that are brought onto sovereign Georgian soil…. I see this as a diplomatic victory for us. Naturally, the final diplomatic victory will come when it isn’t international observers on those borders, but the customs officers and border guards of Georgia. We will achieve this.”
Announcing the deal on November 2, Moscow’s negotiator at the talks, Maxim Medvedkov, said the plan fitted WTO rules, was workable given the realities on the ground, and was originally a Russian idea anyway.
Relations between Georgia and Russia have been difficult for years. In 2006, Moscow blocked wine and mineral water imports from Georgia, a move that did serious damage to that country’s economy.
Some Georgian opposition parties have rejected Saakashvili’s claims of success, saying he should first have secured assurances of free access to the Russian market.
“The Georgian government has agreed to Russia joining the WTO without setting conditions,” said Kakha Kukava, leader of the Free Georgia party.
Paata Zakareishvili of the Institute for Nationalism and Conflict Studies, expressed a similar view, saying the government had secured neither of the two main aims – it had not eased the way for exports to Russia, nor would it get to patrol checkpoints with that country.
“During the negotiating process, it would have been better to be thinking about how to get Georgian products [to Russia]. That would have been feasible, but the government opted for propaganda, for statements about winning,” he said. “In fact, everything stays just the same. Georgia’s main aim was to station customs officers on its borders, and that hasn’t been achieved.”
Despite these concerns, Zakareishvili welcomed the deal’s broader implications as “good for the whole world and the global economy”.
“It isn’t a victory for Georgian diplomacy, but it is a victory for common sense – Georgia did not block Russian accession to the WTO,” he said.
The governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia did not take part in the talks in Switzerland. Both expressed concern at the idea of Georgia keeping tabs on their trade, even indirectly.
South Ossetian foreign minister Murat Jioev said he hoped Russia’s subsequent talks with the WTO would re-examine the Georgian claim to control what in his view was the external border of a different country.
His words were echoed by Vyacheslav Chirikba, the newly-appointed foreign minister of Abkhazia, who said the terms of the deal looked like “a violation of our sovereignty”, although he added that his country would wait to see what Russia had to say about it.
Nino Kharadze works for Radio Liberty in Georgia.
