Grachev Kicks Off Military Mission

Defense Minister Pavel Grachev arrived in Armenia on Wednesday to kick off a four-day trip to the Caucasus aimed at cementing Russia's military presence in the region.Grachev held talks with Armenia's President Levon Ter-Petrosian on the deployment of Russian bases in Armenia and a Russian plan to deploy peacekeeping troops in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.Defense Ministry spokesman Ivan Skrylnik said that Grachev would also hold talks with the Georgian head of state Eduard Shevardnadze and Azerbaijan's president Haidar Aliyev before returning to Moscow late Saturday."The main aim of the visit is to discuss the further deployment of Russian bases in Armenia and Georgia," Skrylnik said.Russia has an estimated total of 23,000 troops in the region with one military base in Armenia and three in Georgia, where Grachev will spend most of his trip. The Russian defense minister will also visit the two autonomous Georgian regions of Abkhazia and Adzharia.Grachev's top-level reception in Georgia will be in stark contrast to previous visits he has made to the region. In February 1993 he was condemned by Shevardnadze for interfering in Georgia's internal affairs just days before he visited Russian forces in the republic. That trip was purely to Russian bases and involved no meetings at state level.Since then the Transcaucasus, and Georgia in particular, have swung firmly back into Moscow's orbit and commentators say the military has been a driving force in consolidating Russia's interests in the region."The Russian general staff has done a brilliant job," said Alexander Rondeli, professor of international relations at Tbilisi University. He said that Russia had limited Georgian independence by covertly backing rebels in the breakaway region of Abkhazia until 1993. Then, Russia forced Shevardnadze to turn to Moscow for help in the face of a rebellion by ex-president Zviad Gamsakhurdia.In October the Georgian government joined the Commonwealth of Independent States and almost immediately defeated Gamsakhurdia with Russian help.In February Georgia and Russia signed a series of military agreements under which Russia will keep its military bases in Georgia past 1995 and train the new Georgian army.Georgia's new defense minister, Vardiko Nadibaidze, appointed in April, although ethnically Georgian has served all his career in Russia and speaks poor Georgian. Local nationalist politicians have been quick to call him a friend of Moscow."Georgia has been reduced to the status of a strategic satellite in the region," said Jonathan Aves, an expert on the Transcaucasus at the Institute of Defense Studies at London University.Aves said the Russian military was interested in a stable Caucasus region in which no ethnic or national group had a clear upper hand.Moscow has recently stressed its support for the territorial integrity of Georgia, dashing any hopes of the Abkhaz government for Russian support in their campaign to split away from rule by Tbilisi."Their policy may be to bolster Georgia as a strategic counterbalance to the North Caucasus," Aves said of Kremlin policy makers. Abkhazia has been de facto independent of Georgia since last fall when separatist forces completely overran the Black Sea region. Russian troops were due to be deployed there this month, although the Russian parliament last week voted against sending them there.