ArmInfo. The recent 43rd meeting between the Russian and Georgian sides regarding the opening of the transport corridor through Abkhazia through a third party - the international Swiss company SGS - did not yield any real results. This was stated at the press conference on April 13 by the chairman of the Union of Cargo Carriers of Armenia Makar Arakelyan.
"Since the beginning of this year, serious political events have taken place, which further alienated the possible ways of resolving this issue, which Armenia dreamed about," the expert said. In this vein, he described the murder of a Georgian citizen in Tskhinvali in February, who allegedly was engaged in intelligence activities, which was the reason for lengthy disagreements. After that, Russian-Georgian relations were negatively affected by S. Skripal's poisoning in England. "The EU and Britain urged the EU member states to send Russian ambassadors from their countries. The Russian side asked Georgia not to take such a decision. However, we know that there is a Russian department at the Swiss Embassy in Tbilisi, from where one employee was already expelled. This is another step that has influenced the course of the process, which, it would seem, is already approaching its resolution. And today Georgia realized that there will not be alternative routes through Abkhazia for a long time, " Arakelyan said.
The expert believes that Armenia, which is not a transit country, should think about its interests in the current situation. The number one task for the government should be, as Arakelyan noted, the improvement of infrastructures, in particular, for creating good conditions for cargo transportation from Georgia, Russia, India, Iran, Iraq, etc.
An agreement was signed between Georgia and Russia in 2011 in Geneva providing for the opening of a transport corridor through a third party - the Swiss company SGS, which would take control of the cargo in Georgia and (transporting it through Abkhazia) would hand it over to the Russian side already on the territory The Russian Federation. However, for a number of reasons, the issue of opening this site is still in a "suspended" state. Earlier, in an interview with ArmInfo, the executive director and co-founder of the APAVEN freight forwarding company Gagik Aghajanian said that the Armenian side had to work very intensively with the Russian Federation so that it would keep its word (after Georgia's consent to become a member of the WTO open a transport corridor - Ed.). "The corridor did not work just because, having received membership in the WTO, the Russian side froze this project. At the same time, the Russian media wrote a lot that the talks allegedly could not have been successful, since the Georgian side raised the issue of the territorial integrity of Georgia. I declare to you responsibly that there was no such thing. It's all a lie! It was just necessary to transfer the arrows to Georgia, "he noted.