[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 71 (Thursday, June 4, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5654-S5655]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONFLICT IN THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA

 Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, the newspapers are full of 
Kosovo and Serbia, of India and Pakistan and of course, Indonesia. 
These threatening events have captured most of the headlines and have 
attracted the attention of the Administration in greater or lesser 
degrees. These are not trivial issues, and we cannot afford to ignore 
their importance for challenging US interests.
  But another conflict rages that, while small, challenges US interests 
in ways that few other conflicts can: I am speaking of the conflict in 
the Republic of Georgia in the distant but strategically critical 
region of Abkazia.
  And yet the stability in independent Georgia is one of the principal 
US interests in the former USSR and should be one of our overriding 
strategic goals. This is not just sentiment for one of the earliest 
Christian civilizations in a part of the world where Christian 
civilizations do not thrive: rather it is a clear statement of our own 
strategic interest and objectives.
  Georgia is a NATO borderland and an entry point to the emerging new 
Silk Road. It is a key ally of our partner Turkey and is important in 
many ways: strategically, militarily, commercially. If Georgia were to 
become unstable, the entire region would be put in jeopardy.
  Against overwhelming odds, Georgia has achieved strong positive 
economic growth in the last few years. It is one of the most stable of 
the post-Soviet states, with world-class leadership in President Eduard 
Shevardnadze. It is America's natural ally in a neighborhood that 
features Iran and Iraq.
  Georgia is central to the successful development of what the new Silk 
Road from Central Europe to China. This ambitious project will 
eventually encompass pipelines, roads and railroads, airports and 
communications networks that stretch from Central Europe to China. This 
corridor will completely alter the economics and the politics of 
Eurasia in ways that we cannot now foresee, but which are certain to 
intersect US strategic interests in Eurasia in many places. The states 
of the Caucasus--Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia--lie at the very 
center of this new Silk Road. For the corridor to function, stability 
in these states is essential.
  Not surprisingly, some people wish ardently to jeopardize America's 
interests in this region by threatening Georgia's stability, and they 
have fastened on a perverse way of doing so. the small, break-away 
region of Abkazia has been Russia's best available instrument to 
diminish Georgia's accomplishments and to imperil its remarkable gains. 
Russia is the only power to benefit from such activity. Let us not be 
timid in naming the problem: Russia is the problem, the aggressor and 
the single-most threat to stability in Georgia and the entire Caucasus.
  Since the early 1990s, Russia, acting through Abkazia, has attempted 
to bring down Georgia. This is no secret. Virtually every expert to 
travel to the region reports the same thing: Russia is responsible for 
arming, training and sustaining Abkazia's so-called freedom fighters. 
Russia's support for the pro-Russian Abkazian leadership is barely 
disguised: Russia has funneled arms and support for more than six years 
into the Abkaz region of Georgia for one specific task: to destabilize 
the government of Eduard Shevardnadze so that Georgia will be unable to 
realize

[[Page S5655]]

its goals of being independent, of joining the community of free 
democratic nations, and of providing better lives--free lives--for the 
people of Georgia.
  It is high time the Administration took a strong position on the 
subject of the Caucasus and of Georgia in particular. So far, it has 
not only failed to reign in Russian efforts against Georgia, but by 
this very failure, it has insured that the Russian-promoted 
destabilization efforts will continue.
  Administartion apathy on this subject is best illustrated by the 
astonishing lack of urgency that the State Department ascribes to 
placing qualified and dynamic ambassadors in these countries. Georgia 
has been without a U.S. ambassador for well over six months. No 
candidate has yet been identified, let alone brought to the Senate for 
confirmation, despite persistent and forceful requests by President 
Shevardnadze and other key leaders in Georgia for such an appointment.
  The Administration has also been supporting the Russian ``mediation'' 
of the Abkaz conflict: this policy must be reversed. Russian 
``mediation'' consists of injecting Russian peacekeepers into the 
region to separate the Georgian and Abkaz combatants. Their behavior in 
the recent fighting in Abkazia shows their true intentions: the best 
case scenario shows that the Russian peacekeeping forces did nothing to 
interdict the flow of separatist personnel and heavy weaponry into the 
region where the fighting was taking place. The worst case scenario has 
them actually providing weapons to the Abkaz combatants. This is 
unacceptable.
  Allowing continued Russian control over this situation is tantamount 
to inserting the fox's first cousin as a mediator between the foxes and 
the hens. The current situation insures that Georgia can only lose. It 
is time for the Administration to demand the removal of the bogus 
Russian peacekeepers, and to insist on their replacement by an 
independent force of peacekeepers. To do less is to acknowledge 
implicitly that Georgia remains within Russia's sphere of control.
  This matter also raises the issue of the continued presence of 
Russian military bases in Georgia. They are there despite the 
overwhelming opposition of Georgian citizens. These bases were 
established at a time when Georgia was in no position to repulse 
Russian advances. Russia has no legitimate national security claim on 
Georgia. Russia is no less safe--indeed it is safer--with a Georgia 
that is free, independent, democratic and with free markets close to 
its southern border. These bases--from which the perpetrators of the 
assassination attempts on President Shevardnadze are reported to have 
fled--must be closed. The United States must not accept the notion that 
Georgian independence can only be secured by Russian power. Nothing 
could be more alien to the truth and to our national values.
  Mr. President, it is time for the Administration to state 
unequivocally that the stability and survival of an independent Georgia 
is a fundamental U.S. interest. That Russia's collusion with the Abkaz 
is nothing less than Moscow's effort to maintain control over sovereign 
Georgia and will not be tolerated; and that it is time to put an end to 
Russian Trojan horses in Georgia--the phony Russian ``peacekeepers'' 
and the military bases that provide Russia with the means to threaten 
Georgia's future and to put U.S. interests at risk.

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