SUKHUMI (Georgia): Georgia hopes to end months of political turbulence with a presidential election this Saturday, but in the rebel Black Sea province of Abkhazia even more serious troubles are brewing.

The people of Abkhazia, a lush province that broke away in a separatist war in the early 1990s, will stay home as the rest of the country votes in the snap poll.

More important for them are events 1,600km to the west where the Serbian province of Kosovo is moving toward independence — an event that the Abkhaz hope will start a domino cascade of statehood for other unrecognised republics.

“The United States has made it clear that it is ready to recognize Kosovo. For us, this is a precedent. We expect Russia to recognise Abkhazia,” the

Russian-backed region’s de facto foreign minister, Sergei Shamba said.

Abkhazia, which comprises about 12 per cent of Georgia’s territory, has had de facto independence since an ethnic Abkhaz militia defeated Georgian forces following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. The war killed thousands and drove some 250,000 ethnic Georgians from the region.

Abkhazia survives largely thanks to Moscow, which has deployed hundreds of peacekeepers in the region and provided Russian passports to more than 80 per cent of its residents.

But Tbilisi is not giving up its territorial claims and campaigning for Saturday’s presidential poll has featured plenty of promises to win back the lost province. Likewise, despite more than 15 years of trying, Abkhazia has failed to win recognition of its independence from any country, including Russia. Yet rebel officials hope that will change after Kosovo declares independence as expected in 2008.

A breakaway Serbian province, Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since 1999 and its ethnic Albanian majority is expected to make a unilateral declaration of independence in the coming months.

Despite protests from Belgrade and Moscow, Western governments are likely to recognise Kosovo’s independence and rebel officials believe that could push Moscow to finally acknowledge their claims.

“If Kosovo becomes independent, we will also have a chance of being recognised by the world. And then maybe our lives will be better,” said pensioner Svetlana Adleyiba, whose apartment building, like many in Sukhumi, remains half-ruined from the war.

Abkhaz officials insist the region has more right to independence than Kosovo.

“Kosovo was the heart of Serbia but Abkhazia was almost always an independent state. It was one of the republics of the Soviet Union and it was only in 1931 that Stalin and (then Georgian Communist Party Secretary Lavrenty) Beria forced it into Georgia,” said the region’s de facto president, Sergei Bagapsh.

Faced with restive minorities in regions like Chechnya, Russia is unlikely to turn its support for the separatists into full-blown recognition of Abkhazia’s right to self-rule, analysts said.

More likely is a move by Georgia to reclaim the territory, either by pushing for international pressure on Russia to stop supporting the rebels, or, as some fear, launching a military campaign to retake the territory.

Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, who called the snap poll after political unrest in November, has vowed repeatedly during the campaign to restore Georgia’s territorial integrity.

Tbilisi, Saakashvili told voters that a vote for him would equal “a train ticket to Sukhumi.” He went even further when speaking to a group of ethnic Georgian refugees from Abkhazia, saying that if he is elected “we will spend next winter in a warmer climate.”—AFP