Foreign ministry of breakaway Abkhazia said it would keep on insisting on change of existing format of the Geneva talks, launched after the August 2008 war, with a purpose to upgrade status of negotiators from “participants” to “delegations”.

“We deem Geneva Discussions to be an important format for conveying position of the Abkhaz Republic to the international community. At the same time, existing format of the Geneva Discussions is no longer suitable for us,” reads a statement released by the breakaway region’s foreign ministry on November 19.

“Abkhazia insists on change of format of the discussions by moving to representations on the level of delegations. Our position has been voiced at the twenty first round of Geneva discussions in October, 2012 and we intend to continue insisting on change of format during the following rounds of [Geneva talks] as well,” reads the statement.

Negotiators in the Geneva talks from Georgia, Russia, United States, as well as from breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia are taking part in the discussions in an individual capacity without identifying the entities they are representing and formally they are referred to as “participants” of Geneva Discussions.

This format was agreed during the second round of Geneva talks in November, 2008 in order to avoid differences on the status of negotiators, in particular of representatives from the breakaway regions.

In the same statement the breakaway region’s foreign ministry said that it had “no illusions” about new government in Georgia, which came into power after the October 1 parliamentary elections.

“The Abkhaz leadership has no illusions about ‘new approaches’ towards resolution of interstate conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia, which are so vigorously advertised by the newly appointed ministers of the Georgian cabinet,” the statement reads.

“Whatever the promises are made about ‘de-isolation of Abkhazia’, giving us ‘everything except recognition’, ‘communicating with the Abkhazians directly’, ‘opening railway link via Abkhazia’, Georgian strategists have the only goal – to reintegrate Abkhazia by all means. We are quite well-informed to avoid falling into all kinds of political and diplomatic traps, which some would like to place around Abkhazia,” it says.