20 April 2015
Vanuatu Foreign Minister: recognition of Abkhazia has "not changed"
In a 31 March interview with RIA Novosti, Vanuatu's Foreign Minister Sato Kilman confirmed that Vanuatu does in fact still recognise Abkhazia.
Vanuatu's recognition of Abkhazia's independence has received a lot of pushback throughout the years. When the news first broke in 2011, Vanuatu's representative to the United Nations Donald Kalpokas emphatically denied it was true when asked by the New York Times. And less than a month later, Sato Kilman was briefly unseated as Prime Minister by Edward Natapei, who very hastily published an error-ridden note in which he `cancelled and withdrew' recognition. However, not before long Kilman was re-instated as Prime Minister and Vanuatu's recognition of Abkhazia reconfirmed.
In 2013, Kilman was ousted as Prime Minister by a government led by Moana Carcasses Kalosil and having Natapei as Minister for Foreign Affairs. This government agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Georgia, and Donald Kalpokas (whose authority was unclear since he had been formally retired as representative to the United Nations) signed an agreement in which Abkhazia was explicitly stated to be part of Georgia. Georgia's government also claimed that Carcasses had actually withdrawn Vanuatu's recognition of Abkhazia, but there were no statements from ni-Vanuatu officials to back this up.
However, Carcasses's government fell in May 2014 and Joe Natuman, who had been Foreign Minister under Natapei, has been Prime Minister since. Sato Kilman is Foreign Minister in this government and on 30 March, during a visit to Moscow to discuss relief following Hurricane Pam, he met with his Abkhazian counterpart Viacheslav Chirikba. The day after, he stated in an interview RIA Novosti that "nothing had changed" in respect to Vanuatu's 2011 recognition of Abkhazia, and that Carcasses's government had merely decided to pursue diplomatic relations with Georgia, noting that he didn't consider these to be incompatible with relations with Abkhazia, which he hoped would soon be finalised.
It is clear that Vanuatu's frequent government changes play an important role in its ambivalent attitude towards Abkhazia. And it may be the case that its contradictory statements have been influenced by the desire to remain on friendly terms with Russia on the one hand and with Western powers on the other. But part of the confusion is certainly also due to unclarity over what constitutes recognition and diplomatic relations. Despite the May 2011 document explicitly stating that Abkhazia and Vanuatu resolved to "establish diplomatic relations at the level of Ambassadors from the signing of this statement", and despite Vanuatu's Foreign Minister Alfred Carlot's October 2011 explanation that "Vanuatu signed diplomatic relations with the Republic of Abkhazia", it seems that Vanuatu considers diplomatic relations to not have been finalised. And so a number of ni-Vanuatu statements that have been interpreted as a denial of its recognition of Abkhazia in fact pertained only to having full diplomatic relations.
