Renegade province Abkhazia elects president - Georgia protests

Aug 26, 2011, 14:33 GMT

Sukhumi/Moscow - The renegade Georgian province Abkhazia on Friday ignored Georgian protests to hold elections to choose a new leader, three months after the death of the entity's president.

Voting was quiet throughout the semi-tropical Black Sea region with turn out at 51 per cent by late afternoon. Polls were scheduled to close at 8 pm (1700 GMT).

Interim President Aleksandr Ankwab, a pro-Russia politician, was widely expected to defeat his opponents, among them Abkhazia's prime minister Sergei Shamba and opposition candidate Raul Khadzhimba.

Officials in neighbouring Georgia, which lost control of Abkhazia after a civil war ending in 1993, repeated their longstanding rejection of Abkhazian claims to be a separate country and called the Friday election a farce.

'The vote has no meaning at all,' said the Georgian parliament speaker David Bakradze in Tbilisi.

Ankwab, in contrast, told Sukhumi reporters after casting his ballot Abkhazia should remain independent and consolidate its strategic partnership with Russia, according to local news reports.

The Friday election was necessary because former Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh, a regional power broker for more than two decades, had died in Moscow after complications from a May lung operation.

Observers in Abkhazia said that, with the exception of minor procedural violations, voting throughout the day appeared to be free and fair.

Voting day tensions were highest in the Abkhaz region of Gali on the de facto border with Georgia, a past scene of armed clashes.

Russian secret service FSB officers and regular army soldiers were visible throughout the district and there were no reports of violence. Russia maintains some 1,700 troops in Abkhazia and recently has upgraded its weaponry with new tanks and artillery.

Abkhazian media accused Georgia of having hindered many election observers from the EU from reaching voting sites. There was no independent confirmation.

Return to Georgian sovereignty is unpopular in Abkhazia because of ethnic differences between the Abkhaz and the Georgians, and lingering antagonism from wars fought in 1992-1993 and in 2008.

During August 2008 Russian forces routed Georgia's US-trained army, in part, by using Abkhazia's ports to land marines who went on to invade Georgia from an unexpected direction.

Abkhazia during the conflict captured and annexed the strategic Kodori valley, which had been controlled by Georgia.

Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Vanuatu have recognized Abkhazia's independence. The EU and the US have led international community calls for the region to return to the sovereignty of Georgia.

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