Bid seeks to recognize Georgia republics

Russia Parliament wants sovereignty for two regions

MILITARY WELCOME - Pro-Russian supporters waved flags as they welcomed the Russian missile cruiser Moskva as it entered Sevastopol Bay Saturday. The missile cruiser returned to Russia's Black Sea fleet base in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea after aiding Russia's military operation in Georgia. (Vasily Batanov/AFP/Getty Images)

MOSCOW - The Russian Parliament called upon President Dmitry Medvedev to recognize the independence of two breakaway Georgian republics yesterday, a gambit that promises to further inflame tensions between Russia and the United States.

Lawmakers in both houses of Parliament voted unanimously for the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where a decades-old rebellion ballooned this month into a bloody struggle between Russia and US-backed Georgia.

Recognition of the rebel republics as independent countries would amount to an attempt on the part of Moscow to redraw the borders of the former Soviet Union.

By attempting to chop away territory from a neighboring nation with close ties to the United States, the declaration would also be viewed as a challenge leveled at American officials who have made plain their support for Georgia's territorial integrity.

But in Russia, officials have described the decision as a matter of moral urgency. Georgia lost its right to keep its borders intact when it launched a military operation in South Ossetia early this month, killing civilians and Russian peacekeepers in the process, Moscow contends.

"Russia should have recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia long ago, and should have followed it up with defense cooperation and assistance treaties long ago too," said Mikhail Delyagin, chairman of Moscow's Institute for Globalization Studies.

"Then Georgia wouldn't have risked invading the countries."

For years, Russia quietly has filled the void left by the republics' distance from the central Georgian government. Residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia carry Russian passports, collect Russian pensions, trade in Russian rubles and even voted in this year's election for Russian president. Hundreds of Russian peacekeepers were stationed in the republics long before the recent eruption of fighting.

Russian involvement in the rebel regions has drawn charges that Moscow is carrying out a slow-motion annexation of the land. Russian officials deny those accusations.

Moscow has been warning of just such a move for months, ever since the West outraged Russia by recognizing the independence of Kosovo.

Georgia sent columns of tanks and soldiers into South Ossetia more than two weeks ago in a surprise maneuver meant to stun the breakaway republic and quickly bring it back under the control of the central government. But the strategy failed: Russia sent thousands of troops to fight on the side of South Ossetia, soundly trouncing Georgia and seizing control of lands even beyond the rebel republics.

Since then, Moscow has vowed to support independence for the republics.

Yesterday, a South Ossetian official hinted that independence was a first step toward joining Russia.

"Currently, it is important for us that South Ossetia should gain independence legally from the point of view of the world community," South Ossetian Foreign Minister Murat Dzhioyev told Interfax.

"After this, we shall be able to seek accession into the Russian Federation, but this issue will be postponed for the future."

In an impassioned appeal for independence, President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia, reminded lawmakers in the lower house of Russia's Parliament of his republic's "special historical, political and ethnocultural relationship with Russia."

"Only the international recognition of independence and sovereignty . . . will give reliable international guarantees of security and free development rights, improve the situation and ensure stability in the Caucasian region," he said.

President Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia, meanwhile, called for a military cooperation agreement between an independent Abkhazia and Russia.

The parliamentary vote was among a handful of signals given by Moscow yesterday that, in the wake of the war in Georgia, relations with the West are going sour.

In remarks carried on Russian state media, Medvedev signaled indifference over the state of cooperation between Russia and NATO.

"It is NATO, not Russia, that is primarily interested in NATO-Russian cooperation," the president said. "If they choose to break off this relationship, even the whole of it, nothing terrible will happen."