 Russia shuts down embassy in Tbilisi
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-04 07:36 Russia slapped back at Georgia yesterday, suspending consular operations at its shuttered embassy in Tbilisi so that ordinary Georgians can't visit relatives in Russia. The suspension means no new applications for Russian entry visas will be accepted. It came after Georgia severed diplomatic ties with Russia following the fighting between the two former Soviet republics last month. "A break-off of diplomatic ties is an action that has a price," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said yesterday in Moscow, adding that the ministry is also considering other measures. The diplomatic break follows a short war and Moscow's recognition of two breakaway Georgia regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as independent nations. The conflict has triggered the worst crisis between Moscow and the West since the 1991 end of the Soviet Union. Without visas, Georgians cannot travel to Russia unless they have dual citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians live in Russia, some with Russian citizenship. "Now I cannot get to Russia to see my wife," Vakhtang Tsereteli, a Georgian whose wife is a Russian citizen and lives in Moscow, said outside the consulate yesterday. "I don't know what to do." Russia closed its embassy in Tbilisi on Tuesday after receiving formal notice from Georgia that it was severing diplomatic ties, Russian Consul Valery Vasilyev said. He said employees have taken down Russian flags and other symbols that adorned the building. The Georgian Embassy in Moscow closed yesterday and all embassy officials will leave by the end of September, according to its charge d'affaires, Givi Shugarov. Cheney in Azerbaijan Russia accused the United States of stirring up instability in Georgia yesterday, hours after US Vice-President Dick Cheney landed in the region to show support for Washington's ex-Soviet allies. Cheney flew into Azerbaijan, Georgia's oil-producing neighbor which has close ties to the United States, on the first leg of a tour that will also include Georgia and Ukraine. "We need to wait until Mr Cheney is actually in Georgia to see how he assesses the situation," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a news briefing. "But all these calls on Tbilisi (by the US) about the need to restore all of its destroyed military capability and so on do not in any way promote the stabilization of the situation in the region," he said. Agencies (China Daily 09/04/2008 page12) |
