Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh was hospitalized Monday following an attack of stenocardia.
"The summit of the heads of the self-proclaimed republics, scheduled for April 10-11, will not take place," Sergei Shamba said. "On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of the self-proclaimed republics will gather for a meeting, while we will postpone the summit of the presidents."
On Tuesday, the UN Security Council will consider the situation in the upper part of the Kodori Gorge and study the possibility of extending the mandate of the UN observer mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) for another six months next week. The UN Secretary General will deliver a report on the situation in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone.
But the United States has once again failed to issue visas for an Abkhazian delegation wishing to take part in the session of the UN Security Council.
Vladislav Chernov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's envoy on the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict, said last week that Moscow regarded the move as "discrimination against one of the parties in the conflict."
Last year, Russia protested the U.S. refusal to grant an entry visa to Shamba, who has Russian citizenship.
Shamba was to have attended a UN Security Council meeting in New York to discuss the situation in Georgia.
The UN Security Council unanimously passed a Russia-sponsored resolution urging Georgia to desist from provocation in Abkhazia and extending the Russian peacekeeping mission in Abkhazia until April 15, 2007.
Russia retains a peacekeeping presence in Georgia's turbulent regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which gained de facto independence following bloody conflicts after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Georgia's leadership accuses the Kremlin of supporting the breakaway regions' drive for full independence.
A resolution adopted August 31, 2006 stressed the importance of close cooperation between the military observers of the UN mission to Georgia and the CIS peacekeeping force as key stabilizing factors in the Abkhazian conflict zone. The UN observer mission has operated in the region since 1993.
The Kodori Gorge in northern Georgia, controlled by Abkhazia in its lower section and Tbilisi in the upper part, has been at the center of tensions between Georgia and the breakaway region since late July, when Georgia conducted what it called a police operation there to disarm a rebellious militia leader.
Russia has insisted on the withdrawal of Georgian troops from Kodori, saying it is crucial for the revival of talks with Abkhazia.
