VZCZCXRO6028
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHKV #4062/01 2931625
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 201625Z OCT 06
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0125
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 02 KYIV 004062 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/UMB 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/20/2016 
TAGS: PREL KDEM YI RS AZ GG MD UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: GUAM STATEMENT CRITICIZES RUSSIAN ACTIONS 
TOWARD GEORGIA 
 
 
Classified By: Political Counselor Kent Logsdon for reasons 1.4(b,d) 
 
¶1. (U) The Organization for Democracy and Economic 
Development - GUAM issued a statement dated October 16 on 
Russia-Georgia tension on the margins of the Commonwealth of 
Independent States (CIS) Council of Foreign Ministers in 
Minsk.  The press reported that Ukrainian delegation head 
First Deputy FM Volodymyr Ohryzko read the statement, which, 
while trying to strike a balance between the two sides, 
welcomed Georgia's release of detained Russian soldiers and 
implicitly criticized Russian measures against Georgia as not 
in keeping with the CIS founding principles.  (Embassy's 
informal translation is in para 6.) 
 
¶2. (U) Earlier, during the October 15 GUAM parliamentary 
assembly meeting in Chisinau, the press noted that Georgian 
Parliamentary Speaker Nino Burjanadze had aimed fire at the 
Ukrainian delegation, led by Parliament (Rada) First Deputy 
Speaker and Communist Party Rada member Adam Martynyuk, for 
its reluctance to tackle the issue of Russian-Georgian 
relations.  According to media reports, the Ukrainian and 
Moldovan delegations were reluctant to discuss Russia-Georgia 
relations or issue a statement, either separately or in the 
final communique. 
 
¶3. (C) In an October 18 conversation, Deputy Foreign Minister 
Andriy Veselovsky said the Ukrainian MFA had proposed to 
Georgia that GUAM release a statement at the Minsk CIS 
gathering.  The Ukrainian MFA had negotiated the text with 
the Georgian MFA, then circulated the text for further 
comment from Moldova and Azerbaijan.  Veselovsky downplayed 
the Ukrainian delegation's failure to support a similar 
statement in Chisinau by noting the parliamentary assembly 
had been in existence only a year and the newly elected 
Ukrainian and Azerbaijani parliaments were still feeling 
their way in the GUAM parliamentary assembly. 
 
¶4. (S) The Ukrainian Defense Ministry, for its part, quietly 
hosted an unpublicized visit to Kyiv of the Georgian Defense 
Minister October 16.  Defense Minister Hrytsenko told the 
Ambassador October 13 that he wanted to engage his Georgian 
colleague without raising Moscow's ire that would inevitably 
result from a public visit at this time.  Hrytsenko voiced 
his concerns that the Russian-Georgian situation was more 
grave than most people realized, claiming that the Russian 
military, following required internal procedures, had been 
collecting signatures from soldiers who had served/were 
serving in Chechnya willing to be sent to Georgia to fight. 
 
¶5. (C) Comment: The split in the policy approaches taken by a 
legislative delegation, on the one hand, and the executive 
branch, on the other, reflects a greater lack of policy 
coherence within the Ukrainian government as a whole, as 
President Yushchenko wrestles with Prime Minister Yanukovych 
and his parliamentary backers for control over foreign 
policy.  Shrewd bureaucrats like Veselovsky will seek 
opportunities to seize the initiative through pre-existing 
mechanisms such as GUAM.  Veselovsky is likely to aim to 
further cement government policy in a proposed November 15 
political directors' meeting in Kyiv on neighborhood policy, 
building on the October 5 E-PINE political directors meeting 
that was also in Kyiv.  End comment. 
 
GUAM Statement 
-------------- 
 
¶6. (U) Text of the October 16 GUAM statement appears below. 
 
Begin text. 
 
The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - 
GUAM welcomes Georgia's decision to transfer the detained 
military officers to the Russian Federation as a measure 
aimed at relieving the tension that emerged in bilateral 
relations. 
 
Any inappropriate actions applied by one Commonwealth member 
to another member are not in keeping with the principles of 
relations set forth in the founding documents of the 
Commonwealth of Independent States. 
 
GUAM urges the cessation of unilateral actions towards 
Georgia aimed at stopping economic, humanitarian and other 
interstate ties. 
 
GUAM expresses its confidence that the problems that emerged, 
including those related to conflict settlement, have to be 
resolved at the negotiation table in accordance with commonly 
accepted norms and principles of international law, 
 
KYIV 00004062  002 OF 002 
 
 
sovereignty, territorial integrity, and border integrity 
found in the UN charter and OSCE and CIS founding documents. 
 
GUAM welcomes the Russian Federation's commitment to withdraw 
Russian military bases and military objects of the Russian 
Group of Troops in Transcaucasia from Georgian territory in 
¶2008. 
 
GUAM also supports Georgian initiatives on settling conflicts 
on its territory, in particular propositions aimed at 
broadening the format of negotiations and peacekeeping 
operations. 
 
GUAM addresses other Commonwealth member states, urging them 
to support efforts to overcome the crisis in relations 
between the Russian Federation and Georgia. 
 
End text. 
 
¶7. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website: 
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. 
Taylor