A constant reminder of unresolved conflicts is the presence even here of refugees from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two breakaway regions that seized the chance for independence during the era of nationalist frenzy that gripped the Caucasus in the early 1990s. After the signing, President Eduard Shevardnadze met the South Ossetian parliamentary chairman, Lyudvig Chibirov. Pessimism is rife over Abkhazia, however. Positions on both sides are unyielding. With the Georgian blockade now joined by Abkhazia's erstwhile sponsor, Russia, and now beginning to bite, the breakaway republic has been plunged into poverty.
Crime is rampant as the remaining population desperately seeks the means to live.
There seems as yet little indication that the Abkhaz side is prepared to countenance the return of the Georgians driven out in 1992-3. UN-sponsored schemes have got almost nowhere. The Georgians insist that the refugees must return first and that Abkhazia must recognise the authority of Tbilisi. Neither side is willing as yet to recognise their mutual guilt for the mistakes that led to the frenzy of communal violence during the brutal war. Some think Shevardnadze will sit out the winter and attack Abkhazia in the spring, hoping that the debilitating winter ahead will hit Abkhazia harder than it will hit the rest of Georgia.