The Cable writes that, according to "a senior GOP Senate aide," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk [see photo on the right courtesy of LegalInfo360.com], "while briefing senators before a recent congressional trip that included a stop in Georgia, asked those senators to pressure Georgia to move toward acceptance of Russia's membership in the WTO." Moreover, according to the aforementioned senior aide, "It was odd to hear Ambassador Kirk behind closed doors urging a group of senators to pressure Georgia to 'be reasonable' while, we understood, the administration was saying publicly it would stay out of a Georgia-Russia issue." Survey of the relevant news reports in the Georgian media over the past couple of months allows one to conclude that the group of senators briefed by Ambassador Kirk included Republican senators Jon Kyl, Mike Crapo, Ron Johnson, and Jeff Sessions. According to Civil.ge, the U.S. senators met with the Georgian government officials in Tbilisi on April 18, as part of their five-country tour, which also included Ukraine and three Baltic states.
It should be recalled that previously the Obama administration officials emphatically insisted that they have no intention of mediating the Russian-Georgian talks or forcing the Georgian side to achieve the agreement with Russians. In early March, the Senior Director for Russia at the National Security Council, Michael McFaul, who has been recently nominated to become the next U.S. Ambassador to Russia, told The Cable: "There are definitely issues remaining between Russia and Georgia regarding trade relations that have to be addressed. There is a process underway. I don't want to prejudge it because we're not involved in it." Furthermore, according to The Cable: "McFaul was firm that the United States would not insert itself into the effort to help Russia and Georgia come to an agreement on the issue. 'We're not going to do that,' he said. At the end of the day this is a bilateral issue, not a trilateral issue.'"
Similar sentiments were expressed by another senior administration official to The Cable in late October of last year: "This is a bilateral issue between Russia and Georgia, this is not a trilateral issue that we are supposed to solve somehow." The same senior administration official clarified that the Obama administration had no intention of exerting influence on Georgia on this issue and that Washington would not offer incentives or disincentives to Tbilisi.
However, the news coverage accompanying the meeting of U.S. and Russian presidents on the sidelines of the G8 summit in France on May 26 suddenly revealed completely different picture. Not only much of the meeting was devoted to the discussion of the Russia's WTO accession, but also, according to a senior administration official, President Barack Obama has been personally engaged with this issue for months. In particular, the official told the ABC News that apparently President Obama came up with the idea of Switzerland acting as an honest broker between Russia and Georgia with regard to Russia's WTO accession-related negotiations. It turns out that President Obama secured President Medvedev's agreement regarding Russia's participation in Swiss-mediated talks with Georgia in November on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization in Yokohama, Japan, whereas President Saakashvili acquiesced at the NATO summit in Lisbon the same month.
The fact that the U.S. Trade Representative tried to convince some Republican senators to pressure the Georgian government to compromise with Russia suggests that the Obama administration reversed its position on this issue. Given the central importance of Russia's WTO accession for the continuation of the seemingly stalled "reset" policy, this reversal should not come as a surprise. It will remain to be seen what outcome this tacit pressure will produce.
Although the Georgian side is often falsely accused of politicizing the Swiss-brokered negotiations both in Russian and Western media, Tbilisi's demands have actually nothing to do with the insistence on the withdrawal of the Russian troops from the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's demands remain unchanged and they include the fulfillment by the Russian side of the obligations included in the 2004 bilateral accession protocol and the resolution of the custom administration issues along the Russian-Georgian border. None of these are insurmountable. With the modicum of good will and some creativity they can be resolved in a manner acceptable to both parties. For instance, the customs regime on the Abkhazian and South Ossetian sections of the Russian-Georgian border can be administered by the third party on Georgia's behalf (view advocated by Damon Wilson, Director of the International Security Program at the Atlantic Council) akin to the arrangement currently in place on the de facto borders of Moldova's separatist enclave of Transdnistria, which is carried out by the European Union. However, considering the attitudes prevailing in the Kremlin at present it is probably highly unrealistic to expect any sign of flexibility from the Russians on these issues. Meanwhile the next round of the Swiss-mediated Russian-Georgian talks, which was originally scheduled to start on June 2, has been postponed for "technical reasons" at the request of the Swiss government.
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