THE EUROPEAN UNION STANDS BY AS GEORGIA SINKS!

Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party, MEP and member of the EP Caucasian Delegation

Brussels, 2 December 2000. "The Russian Federation is continuing, slowly but systematically, with its plan to strangle the Republic of Georgia. As part of this process, it has recently established a system of obligatory visas for Georgian citizens who wish to visit Russia, with the exception of those who reside in Abkhazia and in South Ossetia. An extremely clear way of reminding the Georgian authorities that Russia intends no matter what to continue to rule the roost in the Caucasian region. A warning shot that joins the long list of acts of aggression in the region: from the annihilation of Chechnya to the support for the 'independence-fighters' in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and the recent refusal to honour the agreement reached in the framework of the OECD for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia. A warning which comes just a few weeks after the murder in Tbilisi of Antonio Russo, the reporter who was covering the war in Chechnya for Radio Radicale, and a few days after the murder of the Reuters

cameraman Adam Tepsourgaev.

The Georgian authorities are now faced with a thankless choice: either they bow to the orders of the Kremlin or they continue the slow descent into hell which the country began in 1997-1998, when the 'rouble crisis' slowed down the Russian market and forced tens of thousands of Georgians working in Russia to return to their homeland.

The room for manoeuvre of the Georgian authorities is even tighter since the European Union has done absolutely nothing over the last ten years to offer Georgia any serious prospects for the future. A 'strategy' which the Union has gone to great lengths, with its usual consummate skill, to hide behind a series of decoys, beginning with the ineffective Partnership and Co-operation Agreement. There is no sign whatsoever of an association agreement, let alone of the prospect of Georgia joining the Union. Even the mention of such developments is enough to bring the members of the Commission and the Council out in a cold sweat.

The Georgian authorities, which had been warned of this, can if they wish cry over their fate. They can also decide, finally, to force the issue... by doing what they should have done as long ago as 1997: in other words, by presenting an application for membership in due form to the European Union.

The European Union leaders, however unlikely it seems, might realise the strategic importance of Georgia and, through lack of a grand design, at least abolish the visa requirements for the 5 million citizens of Georgia."

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