Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, left, and Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev, have decided to climb above the problems in relations of Moscow and Tbilisi.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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Medvedev, Saakashvili Interchanged Implications
Past weekend in Georgia, they were busy summing up the results of President Mikhail Saakashvili’s visit to informal CIS summit in St. Petersburg and his first negotiations with Russia’s new President Dmitry Medvedev. The presidents predictably failed to sort out any of the burning issues but discovered some points of coincidence and agreed to meet once again.
The results of Saakashvili’s talk with Dmitry Medvedev were the most popular topic in Georgia past weekend. The event lasted no more than half an hour, and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov unveiled its topics to reporters, while Russia’s delegation didn’t make any comments for the record.
“Russia is cautiously optimistic in relations with Saakashvili,” a source with the RF delegation said on condition of anonymity, explaining that “the meeting manifested that Saakashvili appears quite inclined to communicate,” i.e. the points of coincidence in sorting out some burning issues, first of all the NATO expansion, could be found. Medvedev will probably manage to build adequate relations with Saakashvili, according to the RF delegation.
The sentiment of Georgia’s delegation is more pessimistic. In the course of the talks, the parties didn’t risk discussing definite accidents in Abkhazia, including hitting the spy drones of Georgia. What’s more, in Georgia, they have seen no particular difference in Medvedev’s opinion from the opinion of ex-president Vladimir Putin.
The key result of the talks was mutual readiness of the parties to proceed with the dialogue and meet again to canvass in detail the methods to settle conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, said representatives of Georgia’s embassy in Moscow. But the date of that tête-à-tête conversation of presidents is yet unclear.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 09, 2008
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