Talks to resolve a long-running conflict between the post-Soviet Caucasus nation and its rebellious region broke off in July when Tbilisi moved security forces into the Kodori Gorge, the de facto border between Abkhazia and Georgia proper, and established a local administration formed with Abkhaz political exiles.
Officials from Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the United States met in Geneva Friday for a session of the UN Secretary General's Group of Friends of Georgia (GFG), focusing on progress in the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1716. The document calls for, among other things, the pullout of Georgian armed units from Kodori.
"Moscow assesses as positive the results of the GFG meeting held within the framework of the 'Geneva process'," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued after the meeting. "We hope they will help overcome the pause in the Georgian-Abkhaz negotiating process and lead to tangible shifts in that direction."
Abkhaz delegates to the GFG meeting reiterated the self-proclaimed republic's willingness to resume talks with Tbilisi, but not until it signs a non-aggression pact and withdraws its troops and government officials from Kodori.
Abkhazia's leadership claims Georgia's move into the gorge violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement signed to end a bloody war that broke out after the separatist region proclaimed its independence in the early 1990s.
Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told a news conference in Moscow Friday that the talks will resume if Georgia begins the withdrawal of its forces from Kodori within the next month, in keeping with Resolution 1716.
"If Georgia begins implementing the UN Security Council Resolution before April, then we are in favor of the resumption of the negotiating process," he said, adding that the council is to hold a special session on Georgia that month.
Abkhazia has not been recognized as a sovereign state either by Tbilisi or by the international community. Moscow has been supporting the self-proclaimed republic's bid for independence all along, and has said that if the United Nations grants full sovereignty to the Serbian province of Kosovo, it should act the same way toward Abkhazia.
Georgia's pro-Western government, which came to power on the back of a "rose" revolution in 2003, is determined to bring Abkhazia back under its control.
