Russia Nears Pact to Leave Georgia
MOSCOW — Russia has agreed in principle to close its two military bases in Georgia by 2008, potentially forfeiting one of the key remnants of its Soviet-era influence in the southern Caucasus, Georgian officials said Tuesday.
Concluding talks with her Russian counterpart, Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili said Moscow had tentatively endorsed a plan to begin withdrawing 7,000 troops and military hardware from the former Soviet military outposts almost immediately after an agreement is signed.
The agreement, which cannot be assured until a timetable is negotiated and signed by the nations' presidents, would remove one of several stumbling blocks to ratification of a 1990 treaty on conventional ground forces in Europe. More importantly, it would eliminate one of Moscow's historic footholds in a region it no longer directly controls.
"We have what I would call the main points of an agreement," Zourabichvili said in a meeting with U.S. journalists. She said Russia would have to commit to dates for withdrawing specified troops and materiel before any pact could be considered final. Diplomats will negotiate the remaining details with an eye toward signing the agreement as early as May 9.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov hinted late Monday that a tentative timetable had been reached, adding that any withdrawal would be made "stage by stage, and will be launched as early as this year if an agreement is reached." Georgian officials said the tentative plan called for concluding the pullout by Jan. 1, 2008.
Stung by the wholesale withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow has maintained the two bases, even as Georgia demanded their closure, set its sights on joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and developed increasingly close military ties to the U.S.
Georgia accuses Russia of supporting separatists in three breakaway zones of the former Soviet republic. One of the bases is in the former breakaway region of Adzharia, which was returned to full Georgian control last year. The other base lies in southern Georgia near the border with Armenia.
Russia has used various mechanisms to exert influence in neighboring former Soviet republics. Those efforts have been criticized by the U.S., which is expanding its own presence in the region. The possible agreement with Georgia suggests that Moscow may be reevaluating its policy, particularly in light of popular revolts in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan that have installed democratic governments less subject to Russian influence and more open to close ties with NATO, Europe and the U.S., some analysts said.
