Georgia send envoys to Moscow, Kyiv to discuss Abkhazia

Adjar Supreme Council Chairman Aslan Abashidze, who is Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's special envoy for Abkhazia, is in Moscow for talks with Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister Valerii Loshchinin (who performs the same function for Russian President Vladimir Putin) on how economic concessions could expedite a solution to the Abkhaz conflict, Caucasus Press reported on 12 February, quoting Abashidze's press service. Also on 12 February, Georgian National Security Council Secretary Tedo Djaparidze met in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma to discuss bilateral relations and the Abkhaz question, Caucasus Press reported. Ukraine has repeatedly offered to provide peacekeepers to serve in Abkhazia as part of a UN force. Kuchma also offered during last month's informal CIS summit to try to mediate a solution of the Abkhaz conflict. LF
...AS ABKHAZ PARLIAMENT-IN-EXILE APPEALS TO UN, WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL

The Tbilisi-based Abkhaz parliament-in-exile, comprising the Georgian deputies elected to the Abkhaz parliament in late 1991, passed a resolution on 12 February demanding that the UN launch a peace-enforcement operation in Abkhazia to pave the way for the return to their homes of Georgian displaced persons who fled Abkhazia during the 1992-93 war, Caucasus Press reported. The parliament-in-exile also decided on 12 February to send a delegation to The Hague to present to the International War Crimes Tribunal some 30 volumes of materials on war crimes allegedly committed by the Abkhaz against the breakaway republic's Georgian population in 1992-93, Caucasus Press reported. The delegation will be headed by the exiled legislature's deputy chairman, Givi Gvazava. LF