UKRAINE: GUAM STATEMENT CRITICIZES RUSSIAN ACTIONS

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 KYIV 004062

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/UMB

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/20/2016
TAGS: PREL KDEM YI RS AZ GG MD UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: GUAM STATEMENT CRITICIZES RUSSIAN ACTIONS
TOWARD GEORGIA


Classified By: Political Counselor Kent Logsdon for reasons 1.4(b,d)


1. (U) The Organization for Democracy and Economic
Development - GUAM issued a statement dated October 16 on
Russia-Georgia tension on the margins of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) Council of Foreign Ministers in
Minsk. The press reported that Ukrainian delegation head
First Deputy FM Volodymyr Ohryzko read the statement, which,
while trying to strike a balance between the two sides,
welcomed Georgia's release of detained Russian soldiers and
implicitly criticized Russian measures against Georgia as not
in keeping with the CIS founding principles. (Embassy's
informal translation is in para 6.)


2. (U) Earlier, during the October 15 GUAM parliamentary
assembly meeting in Chisinau, the press noted that Georgian
Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze had aimed fire at the
Ukrainian delegation, led by Parliament (Rada) First Deputy
Speaker and Communist Party Rada member Adam Martynyuk, for
its reluctance to tackle the issue of Russian-Georgian
relations. According to media reports, the Ukrainian and
Moldovan delegations were reluctant to discuss Russia-Georgia
relations or issue a statement, either separately or in the
final communique.


3. (C) In an October 18 conversation, Deputy Foreign Minister
Andriy Veselovsky said the Ukrainian MFA had proposed to
Georgia that GUAM release a statement at the Minsk CIS
gathering. The Ukrainian MFA had negotiated the text with
the Georgian MFA, then circulated the text for further
comment from Moldova and Azerbaijan. Veselovsky downplayed
the Ukrainian delegation's failure to support a similar
statement in Chisinau by noting the parliamentary assembly
had been in existence only a year and the newly elected
Ukrainian and Azerbaijani parliaments were still feeling
their way in the GUAM parliamentary assembly.


4. (S) The Ukrainian Defense Ministry, for its part, quietly
hosted an unpublicized visit to Kyiv of the Georgian Defense
Minister October 16. Defense Minister Hrytsenko told the
Ambassador October 13 that he wanted to engage his Georgian
colleague without raising Moscow's ire that would inevitably
result from a public visit at this time. Hrytsenko voiced
his concerns that the Russian-Georgian situation was more
grave than most people realized, claiming that the Russian
military, following required internal procedures, had been
collecting signatures from soldiers who had served/were
serving in Chechnya willing to be sent to Georgia to fight.


5. (C) Comment: The split in the policy approaches taken by a
legislative delegation, on the one hand, and the executive
branch, on the other, reflects a greater lack of policy
coherence within the Ukrainian government as a whole, as
President Yushchenko wrestles with Prime Minister Yanukovych
and his parliamentary backers for control over foreign
policy. Shrewd bureaucrats like Veselovsky will seek
opportunities to seize the initiative through pre-existing
mechanisms such as GUAM. Veselovsky is likely to aim to
further cement government policy in a proposed November 15
political directors' meeting in Kyiv on neighborhood policy,
building on the October 5 E-PINE political directors meeting
that was also in Kyiv. End comment.

GUAM Statement
--------------


6. (U) Text of the October 16 GUAM statement appears below.

Begin text.

The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development -
GUAM welcomes Georgia's decision to transfer the detained
military officers to the Russian Federation as a measure
aimed at relieving the tension that emerged in bilateral
relations.

Any inappropriate actions applied by one Commonwealth member
to another member are not in keeping with the principles of
relations set forth in the founding documents of the
Commonwealth of Independent States.

GUAM urges the cessation of unilateral actions towards
Georgia aimed at stopping economic, humanitarian and other
interstate ties.

GUAM expresses its confidence that the problems that emerged,
including those related to conflict settlement, have to be
resolved at the negotiation table in accordance with commonly
accepted norms and principles of international law,

KYIV 00004062 002 OF 002


sovereignty, territorial integrity, and border integrity
found in the UN charter and OSCE and CIS founding documents.

GUAM welcomes the Russian Federation's commitment to withdraw
Russian military bases and military objects of the Russian
Group of Troops in Transcaucasia from Georgian territory in

2008.

GUAM also supports Georgian initiatives on settling conflicts
on its territory, in particular propositions aimed at
broadening the format of negotiations and peacekeeping
operations.

GUAM addresses other Commonwealth member states, urging them
to support efforts to overcome the crisis in relations
between the Russian Federation and Georgia.

End text.


7. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
Taylor