ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

opinion now is that for the time being probably the most you can hope for is stabilizing this conflict rather than really resolving it. Q: Did you feel the influence of the Armenian lobby in the United States on this issue? PERINA: Certainly I knew there was a lot of interest in this issue on the Hill and in the Armenian community in America. One of the reasons the U.S. had gotten more deeply involved in this issue by becoming a Co-Chair was in response to pressure on the Administration to do more in finding a resolution of the conflict. So in a sense, I owed the creation of my job, the existence of the Special Negotiator position, to the Armenian lobby. But I must say that apart from the interest, there was no effort by the Hill or the Armenian community to push us in a particular direction in the negotiations. It was more a case of keeping people informed of progress and so on. I regularly briefed staffers and also members on the Hill about the talks, and I also met with Armenian community leaders. I visited Glendale, California, home of one of the largest Armenian communities in the United States. There is even a local Armenian television station there. I gave interviews and had a number of public meetings. It was mainly an effort to reassure people that we were working on the problem and had not forgotten it. I did not go into any details of the negotiations because these were always very tightly held. But I always had good meetings, and I think people trusted us to be fair. Besides, I always had the impression that the American Armenian community was really more interested in the genocide issue than in Nagorno-Karabakh. Q: So what was the next conflict you worked on? PERINA: Let’s turn to Abkhazia. This is a region on the Black Sea within Georgia that seceded from Georgia when the Soviet Union came apart. The reasons also stemmed from ethnic hatred with a very long history. There was a war between Georgians and Abkhaz in 1992, and it was a very cruel and bloody war. Probably twenty to thirty thousand people were killed, with atrocities committed on both sides. I recognized the minute I started working on this that it would be the most difficult of the four conflicts in my portfolio to resolve. The hatred between Abkhaz and Georgians was the worst I had ever seen in either the Balkans or the Caucasus. It was even greater than that between Serbs and Albanians. This was for historic reasons but also because of the cruelty and nature of the war. It was an unusual war. In most ethnic conflicts of this sort a majority ethnically cleanses a minority. In Abkhazia, however, the reverse was true. The Abkhaz had been an ethnic minority of about 100 thousand people out of half a million but with Russian and Chechen help they ethnically cleansed several hundred thousand Georgians. The entire region after the war had a population of about 175 thousand, which is fewer than the number of displaced Georgians. This meant that the Abkhaz were dead set against any settlement that would allow even a portion of the Georgians to return, which was the prime demand of the Georgians. So there was very little common ground to work with for a settlement. I always believed that another reason for the difficulty of resolving this conflict was that Abkhazia was really worth fighting over. It is gorgeous, with mountains coming right 112
down to the Black Sea. Since I was the negotiator, I had opportunity to visit all of these secessionist regions, even though American diplomats were normally restricted from travel there because we did not recognize the regimes. I never found Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh or for that matter Kosovo particularly attractive, and South Ossetia least of all. But Abkhazia is prime real estate, potentially a big Club Med. I visited during tangerine season, and there were these orchards of tangerine trees right by the seacoast with a Mediterranean climate and beautiful scenery. It was also fascinating because driving from Georgia proper to Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, there were all these abandoned houses and villas along the road. This was because after 200,000 Georgians were expelled, the Abkhaz could not fully populate the area. There were some groups that started coming, particularly Russians and Armenians, but it was not enough to repopulate the region and fill all those abandoned homes. Q: Were there Russians in the region? PERINA: There were, in many different capacities. There were a growing number of Russian tourists and also Russian investors and businessmen who saw the potential of the area. There were several Russian bases in Georgia, including in Abkhazia, that were a holdover from Soviet days but still held by the Russians. But most importantly, there was a peacekeeping force in Abkhazia of several thousand Russian troops. This had been part of the ceasefire arrangements in 1994. The peacekeeping force was supposed to be a CIS (Confederation of Independent States) force but in practice it was all Russian, and it was one of the big political problems. The Georgians agreed to the force in 1994 but thereafter recognized that it was really functioning as a protective force for Abkhazia. In my time, the Georgians were always demanding that the Russians pull out but then backed away after the Abkhaz said this would lead to a renewed war. This was a lot of discussion of finding a substitute force from other countries but no agreement was ever reached on one, and not many countries volunteered to be peacekeepers. So there was always a crisis when the time came for the annual renewal of the CIS peacekeeping mandate but in fact it was always renewed. Q: So how did the negotiations work? PERINA: The negotiating structure was totally different from the one in Nagorno- Karabakh. The United Nations was in charge of this conflict and not the OSCE. There was in fact a United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) that was responsible for overseeing the ceasefire and the work of the peacekeepers. This did not work very well because the Russian general in charge of the peacekeepers did not feel at all responsible to a civilian UN diplomat who was in charge of the Mission. UNOMIG had a presence of several hundred people in Sukhumi but this was no match to several thousand Russian troops. The UN role did determine that the political negotiations regarding Abkhazia took place in UN contexts, on many different levels. There was a formal negotiating process of which we were not members and that involved the United Nations, Russia, the Georgians and the Abkhaz. This very soon got bogged down and was not going anywhere. Then there were negotiations in New York, in the Security Council, within a group called the Friends of the Secretary General on Georgia. This 113
Page 1 and 2:
The Association for Diplomatic Stud
Page 3 and 4:
Holbrooke visits Albanians Dayton M
Page 5 and 6:
throughout the country were execute
Page 7 and 8:
capitalists and so on. At that time
Page 9 and 10:
taken to an apartment which initial
Page 11 and 12:
Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
Page 13 and 14:
they agreed to send me there. Marxi
Page 15 and 16:
most comprehensive collection of in
Page 17 and 18:
Q: What was the background of your
Page 19 and 20:
is there from that trial?” I thou
Page 21 and 22:
word that he was going to come to a
Page 23 and 24:
Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
Page 25 and 26:
very different interpretations. The
Page 27 and 28:
Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
Page 29 and 30:
I will always remember that staff m
Page 31 and 32:
was very tough. We did suspend the
Page 33 and 34:
line was that a person was made to
Page 35 and 36:
there. The Polish economy was nose-
Page 37 and 38:
Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
Page 39 and 40:
war. But I can tell you that the So
Page 41 and 42:
museums. Even in the private sector
Page 43 and 44:
to the Soviet Union. Everything tha
Page 45 and 46:
phrases “Open this gate, tear dow
Page 47 and 48:
PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
Page 49 and 50:
Those plenary sessions I actually w
Page 51 and 52:
PERINA: That is exactly right. The
Page 53 and 54:
Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
Page 55 and 56:
PERINA: This was an issue because o
Page 57 and 58:
position in Europe, and really the
Page 59 and 60:
Soviet domination. They had histori
Page 61 and 62: Q: That was my impression as well w
Page 63 and 64: welcoming dinner in a restaurant an
Page 65 and 66: Q: How were you received by the Ser
Page 67 and 68: eard, and he functioned as everythi
Page 69 and 70: Part of the reason that we didn’t
Page 71 and 72: One of the more interesting people
Page 73 and 74: Q: So what was happening with Kosov
Page 75 and 76: Albanians were very anxious to have
Page 77 and 78: I remember Holbrooke’s first visi
Page 79 and 80: cannot now remember what finally tr
Page 81 and 82: Q: And this was not an idle comment
Page 83 and 84: price for having a very bad leaders
Page 85 and 86: PERINA: Certainly during the period
Page 87 and 88: Q: So you took over the Holbrooke r
Page 89 and 90: PERINA: Not really. We coordinated
Page 91 and 92: why I believed that it was not wort
Page 93 and 94: Q: Can you give a brief summary of
Page 95 and 96: PERINA: Well the American interests
Page 97 and 98: shorter visits of three to four wee
Page 99 and 100: Q: How so? PERINA: Well, he felt un
Page 101 and 102: Q: Still, it strikes me that all of
Page 103 and 104: As for the European Union, most Mol
Page 105 and 106: PERINA: Nagorno-Karabakh is the mos
Page 107 and 108: e called the “Prague Process” w
Page 109 and 110: we physically crossed the front lin
Page 111: were about three-quarters of the po
Page 115 and 116: PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
Page 117 and 118: political interests to keep it goin
Page 119 and 120: a huge personal embarrassment. It l
Page 121 and 122: clearly followed the advice because
Page 123 and 124: good governance and so on. In its b
Page 125 and 126: Deputy Secretary, Richard Armitage,
Page 127 and 128: PERINA: Relations with Europe were
Page 129: End of interview 129
show all

ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?