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

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Q: Did it seem that this conflict could be resolved more easily? PERINA: Definitely. This is what many people believed, and I believed as well. There was a different dynamic to this conflict. The hatreds were not as deep as in Abkhazia or Nagorno-Karabakh. In fact, most of the history of the region had been peaceful. Intermarriages between Georgians and Ossetians were not unusual. The outburst of Georgian nationalism after independence had sparked the conflict but there seemed to be hope of bringing the ethnic groups together again. There was no more violence underway by the time I got involved, and a peacekeeping force of Russian, Georgian and Ossetian forces, plus an OSCE monitoring mission, were keeping things fairly quiet. The conventional wisdom about South Ossetia was that it was not a dangerous conflict and that the Ossetians were waiting to see how the Abkhaz conflict would be resolved and then try to piggy-back on it in cutting a deal with the Georgians. Q: What kind of a deal? PERINA: Well, that would depend of what kind of deal the Abkhaz cut. But at one point I had the notion that perhaps we should try reversing this—rather than waiting for South Ossetia to copy Abkhazia, we should start by resolving South Ossetia and seeing if that might help promote an Abkhazia settlement. So I made a trip by car to the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali to meet with the leadership. Unfortunately, however, there was a power struggle underway within this leadership. A rather moderate President, or so-called President, who many thought would be willing to find a resolution of the conflict had just been replaced with strong Russian backing by a hardliner named Eduard Kokoity. Kokoity was in Moscow when I visited and so I was told I could only meet with one of his deputies, a person so unremarkable that I honestly do not remember his name, though it will be in the reporting cable. He was also pretty hardline in not willing to even discuss any compromise to South Ossetia’s so-called independence. The one thing he did want to discuss was any possibility of American economic assistance to the region. This was not surprising given the incredible poverty of the region, which was the most salient thing that I remember about it. Tskhinvali was this dusty little town with empty streets and hardly any people that I could see. It was a very depressing place. There was more life to be seen on the road to and from Tbilisi but it consisted largely of open air markets where things like old automobiles and machinery appeared to be on sale. I was later told that this was indeed part of the basically black-market economy of South Ossetia, where stolen and custom-free goods were sold and smuggled into Georgia proper. Like Transnistria except on a smaller and poorer scale, South Ossetia basically found a niche in black-market dealings. One person facetiously called it a big parking lot for stolen cars. Q: So the black market kept it going? PERINA: I think it was a big part of the reason. I would say two things kept it going: the economic interests that stemmed from the black market and then Russia. There was probably a lot of overlap between these two. The Russians had both economic and 116
political interests to keep it going. My impression, and everything I heard from other observers, was that most of the population would have been ready for a settlement. There was in particular a real desire for Western economic assistance. The region was terribly poor. One Westerner in Georgia who had been watching the situation for a long time told me that basically South Ossetia could be bought for 100 million dollars. Not literally bought, of course. He meant that an offer of such an assistance program would convince most South Ossetians to re-join Georgia. I think that the European Union tried the approach of offering a large amount of assistance. The European Union in fact took a special interest in this conflict, perhaps also thinking that it was the one most likely to be solved. The EU was looking for projects to enhance its international profile and would very much have wanted itself to be seen as the main force in resolving one of the frozen conflicts in the Caucasus. The EU did a lot in South Ossetia but the main reason it all failed was, in my view, Russian resistance. Moscow was just not ready to give up the region, particularly after Saakashvili came to office and Russian–Georgian relations plummeted. The Russians wanted to hold South Ossetia, if only as additional leverage against Georgia. Q: So the fourth conflict you dealt with was Transnistria? PERINA: That’s right, the Transnistrian secession in Moldova. We have talked about this conflict before since I already worked on it when I was the Ambassador to Moldova. I just changed hats and continued to work on it as the Special Negotiator. Of course, this was still in sort of an ex-officio capacity since the U.S. was not one of the designated mediators. We just tried to use our influence to promote progress in the talks. A formal role for the U.S. and the EU came later, after I left, when we were formally designated as participating in the OSCE talks. When I became Special Negotiator I knew this conflict quite well, I knew Smirnov and all the players, and thus was in a position to be helpful. I also still believed that this should be the easiest conflict to resolve, even easier than South Ossetia. The economic stakes of the black market were probably much higher but Moldova had the advantage of not being on Russia’s border, as Georgia was. Transnistria was not contiguous with Russian territory as South Ossetia and Abkhazia were, and this made it more difficult for the Russians to maintain a grip on it. At least that was my thinking. Q: Were you wrong? PERINA: Yes and no. The good news was that Russia in fact was ready to find a settlement, on its terms, to the conflict. The bad news was that its terms included maintaining a status for Transnistria that would largely just have legalized the status quo. I used to characterize the Russian position, in a very simplified way, as follows: The Transnistrians would wink and say “OK, we are part of Moldova,” and the Moldovans would wink and say “OK. The conflict is resolved.” But otherwise, Transnistria would be given so much autonomy that everything else would stay the same: the Russian presence, the black marketeering, the state within a state structure and so on. In fact, all of these things would be legalized through a settlement. In our view, such a settlement was worse 117
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The Association for Diplomatic Stud
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Holbrooke visits Albanians Dayton M
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throughout the country were execute
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capitalists and so on. At that time
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taken to an apartment which initial
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Q: You said that after Cleveland yo
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they agreed to send me there. Marxi
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most comprehensive collection of in
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Q: What was the background of your
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is there from that trial?” I thou
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word that he was going to come to a
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Q: During the Vietnam War, there wa
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very different interpretations. The
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Q: So you were there from 1979? PER
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I will always remember that staff m
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was very tough. We did suspend the
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line was that a person was made to
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there. The Polish economy was nose-
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Q: What sorts of issues did you tal
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war. But I can tell you that the So
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museums. Even in the private sector
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to the Soviet Union. Everything tha
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phrases “Open this gate, tear dow
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PERINA: Yes, they did. Jumping ahea
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Those plenary sessions I actually w
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PERINA: That is exactly right. The
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Q: OK, in 1989 you’re going to th
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PERINA: This was an issue because o
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position in Europe, and really the
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Soviet domination. They had histori
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Q: That was my impression as well w
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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
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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 and 112: were about three-quarters of the po
Page 113 and 114: down to the Black Sea. Since I was
Page 115: PERINA: It is difficult to say. He
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
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