How is South Ossetia different from Kosovo?

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MOSCOW. (Alexei Makarkin for RIA Novosti) - Russia has toughened its stand on the South Ossetian issue.

It acknowledges Georgia's territorial integrity, but the latest official statements have pointed out that this integrity is not a "political or legal reality."

In fact, Georgia just has to admit what is widely recognized: it lost control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia about 15 years ago. But any mention of the fact by the Russian Foreign Ministry has sent Tbilisi in a new fit of rage. Georgia has repeatedly accused Russia of trying to annex South Ossetia and merge it with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.

But the blame for the South Ossetian problem lies with the Georgian leadership of the early 1990s. Tbilisi made the fatal decision to prohibit the use of the Ossetian language in official documents in the region. This prompted Ossetians to demand that the region's status be changed from an autonomy to a republic. In response, the Georgian authorities abolished the autonomy. The developments that followed are well known: the Ossetian authorities realized that their people would not be guaranteed the right to preserve and develop their national and cultural identity as long as they remained part of Georgia, and proclaimed independence.

Now the Georgian authorities are offering a compromise based on restoring South Ossetia's autonomy and talking of the value of friendship. But it is too late. No one can convince Ossetians that Georgia will not try to encroach on their rights at some point in the future, be it five or twenty years. And they have reasons for fear. In 1991, Yuri Shmidt, a prominent Russian lawyer and human rights activist, who cannot be suspected of promoting the Russian imperial idea, acted as defence council for Torez Kulumbekov, a leader of the South Ossetian national movement. He spoke of how Georgia at first had come up with democratic slogans, and said many beautiful words about the rights of nations and of human rights and freedoms. "Gradually, however, the idea of rights for the Georgian nation somehow became dominant," he said.

This is how Shmidt described Georgian-Ossetian relations 15 years ago. No one can guarantee that something similar will not happen again if Ossetians accept a compromise. There are precedents when countries were divided by a nation's right to self-identity. Czechs and Slovaks parted and formed separate states and now they co-exist peacefully within the EU. Serbia and Montenegro have just seen a similar bloodless divide. Now the West is putting pressure on Serbia to agree to a referendum on Kosovo's independence, the outcome of which is absolutely predictable. Yet the West does not accept the idea of separating Ossetia from Georgia, where people's historical experience is not much different from that of Kosovo Albanians.

There is a paradox here: several years ago, the United States and the European Union lambasted Slobodan Milosevic for appealing to history instead of reality when discussing the Kosovo problem. Milosevic recalled Kosovo's importance for Serbs as the cradle of their national culture, as a territory where many events important for the nation had taken place. But the West viewed this approach as outdated and even violating the rights of Albanian people now residing in the region. Milosevic was accused of reviving the idea of Great Serbia, of denying Kosovo Albanians the right to develop independently.

Is the situation in South Ossetia different from Kosovo? No, it is not. In both cases, there are people willing to exercise their right for self-identity. For some reason, Serbs cannot use historical traditions as an argument on territorial problems, but Georgians, who insist on the region being originally part of their territory, can.

If we are to recall the history of the conflicts, Ossetians did not conquer anyone, unlike Muslims, who came to the Balkans with the Ottoman Empire's bloody expansion. Ossetians settled in what is now South Ossetia in the Middle Ages on order of Georgian feudal lords who appreciated their diligence in farming. By the way, historical sources indicate that later Ossetians bought out the lands they farmed, instead of seizing or expropriating them. Moreover, South Ossetia became part of Russia twenty-five years earlier than Georgia, which it pointed out in its appeal to the Russian Constitutional Court.

So both modern times and history testify to the right of the Ossetian people to choose an independent road of their development. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has urged Georgia not to be afraid to hold a referendum on the issue in the region. "The right to self-identity is part of international law that is exercised via the expression of will," he said. Indeed, it will be hard to explain to Ossetians why they, unlike Kosovo Albanians, have been deprived of this right.

Alexei Makarkin is deputy Director General of the Center for Political Technologies.

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