Aztag Daily (Beirut), 7 August 2004
South Caucasus: A war-zone or a place for holidays?
An Interview with Hratch Tchilingirian
by Khatchig Mouradian
`Abkhazia is not a place for holidays...it is a war zone,' said Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili earlier this month, threatening to sink foreign (implicitly understood as Russian) ships that enter the region without permission from his government. His comments came as tensions escalated between the central authorities of Georgia and two of its breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Saakashvili has promised to win back. Saakashvili's pronouncements on South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been furiously opposed by Moscow, whose relations with Georgia have plummeted from bad to worse since a `rose revolution' brought pro-western Saakhasvili to power.
[French version]