Ecuador Set to Consider Georgia Region Recognition
By Conor Sweeney
October 30, 2009
Reuters
MOSCOW, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said on Friday he would consider recognising Georgia's two breakaway regions if they requested it, prompting rebel Abkhazia to say it would submit such a request within days.
Only two other Latin American countries, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have followed Russia's lead and recognised the two regions as independent countries following last August's Russian-Georgian war over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia.
"If both regions officially ask Ecuador to recognise them, we will seriously consider this request," Correa said at a press conference on Friday.
Correa, a critic of Washington and an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said he hoped Russia might offer future financing of up to $2.5 billion infrastructure in Ecuador.
But he said the issue of recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia was never discussed during his three days in Moscow.
Abkhazia, a lush strip of land on the Black Sea which broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s in a bloody war, responded an hour after Correa's comments and said it would submit plans for recognition to Ecuador next week, Interfax reported.
"Within the next few days, possibly next week, Abkhazia plans to ask the President of Ecuador to recognise the republic's independence," the news agency quoted a source in Abkhazia's Foreign Ministry as telling them.
"We are staying in touch with the Ecuadorian authorities," the source said.
(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; Editing by Michael Roddy)
