Extraneous Conditions

Moscow continues to refuse to withdraw Russian military bases from Georgia, advancing new conditions, such as the redesignation of the bases as "anti-terrorist centers". Vladimir Socor notes that

the conditions have grown in number and in brazenness, compared to what Moscow had demanded at the preceding rounds of negotiations. The escalation of conditions is probably also designed and timed to dissuade U.S. President George W. Bush from raising this issue with due emphasis at his upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Socor concludes:

Attending the negotiations, Giorgi Bokeria, who is a close political ally of President Mikheil Saakashvili, remarked that Georgia must extricate itself from this hopeless process, stop using the 1999 OSCE Istanbul commitments [repudiated by Moscow] as the main Georgian argument, and demand instead the withdrawal of Russian troops on the basis of Georgia's national sovereignty and international law. Bokeria's observation is the only good result of this round in a negotiating process that has long ago become farcical. This observation points the way forward for Georgia.