ST. PETERSBURG, June 14 (RIA Novosti) - Relations between Russia and Georgia remain complicated but the neighboring countries' presidents sought to play down tension early Wednesday morning after a meeting that nevertheless failed to bring about a breakthrough.
Following a ninety-minute meeting in St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili acknowledged that bilateral relations had deteriorated in recent months, in particular over the role of Russian peacekeepers in conflict zones within Georgia and a Russian ban on imports of Georgian wine and mineral water.
But Putin was optimistic about the future: "I am very glad that the meeting took place, as we analyzed the difficulties in Russian-Georgian relations and discussed possible ways of rebuilding them and developing ties."
Given controversy in his homeland about the role of Russian peacekeepers in zones of conflicts dating back to the 1990s and the spring ban on two of Georgia's main export items, Saakashvili was more circumspect saying, "Many unresolved issues have built up in Russian-Georgian relations recently, which is a cause for concern."
Georgia's parliament has called for the withdrawal of all Russian peacekeepers from its breakaway region South Ossetia and is also set to call for the pullout of Russia's peacekeeping contingent from another self-proclaimed republic, Abkhazia.
Putin said, "Obviously, after a conversation as short as the one that's taken place, such problems can't be solved, but I would like to stress that we have the will to work on these conflicts."
The Georgian president said his country would pursue peaceful dialogue, but stuck to his previously announced position: "We will never agree to our territory being seized or taken away. Georgia is a small country, and we have nothing more to give away, not one meter."
The Russian president said bridges must be built between conflicting sides, and that conflict regulation must not be carried out with a "knife and razor." "This demands patience and a genuine search for agreements. There is no other way to build strong relations in the long term," he said.
On the dispute over Russia's ban on Georgian wine imports, Putin said Georgia would not have any further problems exporting wine to Russia once counterfeiting problems were solved. "This relates not only to Georgian wine, but to any other product." The president said Russia also had a major counterfeiting problem, which it was also trying to tackle.
Given the popularity of wine from the South Caucasus republic in Russia, Saakashvili said humorously, "I hope this problem will be solvable, because it [wine] could run out in Georgia. And I wouldn't want Russia to end up without any wine."
