Withdrawal of Georgian troops only way out of Abkhazia conflict --

MOSCOW, July 19 (Itar-Tass) - Adoption of joint Georgian-Abakhzian
documents on the non-use of force and withdrawal of Georgian troops from the upper part of the Kodori Gorge in the much-troubled breakaway region of Abkhazia offer the only way out of the dragging conflict around Abkhazia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday night.
Only these steps will unblock the process of negotiations between
Georgia's central government and the Abkhazian authorities, Medvedev said as he received German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeyer, the Kremlin press service said.
Steinmeyer, who came to Russia on a working visit after a trip to
Georgia, told Medvedev about the contents of his meetings with Georgian and Abkhazian leaders, as well as about the steps Germany is taking as the coordinator of the Group of Friends of the UN Secretary General for Georgia to reduce tensions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, another region of Georgia that has been seeking independence and sovereignty for itself since the beginning of the 1990's.
Medvedev said on his part that the sooner the Georgian government and Abkhazia lift the barriers to negotiations, the more chances there will be for the solution of other knotty and highly sensitive problems in Georgian-Abkhazian relations.
The two men also discussed some pressing issues of bilateral relations pertaining to coordination of a schedule of Russian-German political contacts, which Medvedev and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel had agreed on in the course of a meeting in Japan on the sidelines of the recent G8 summit conference.
The discussion embraced, in part, preparations for a new round of
bilateral consultations that Medvedev and Merkel are going to have in St Petersburg in early October.