Russia, Georgia Reopen Border Crossing

Russia and Georgia have agreed to reopen their major border crossing, officials said on Thursday, signaling the first thawing of ties between the two countries since they went to war last year over a separatist enclave.
The crossing, at the Upper Lars checkpoint in the Caucasus mountains, has been closed since 2006, when relations began growing tense, in part because of efforts by the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to align himself more closely with the United States.

Russia also banned imports of Georgian products, including its popular wines, and cut air transportation links. In August 2008, war broke out after Georgia tried to retake South Ossetia, a separatist enclave that has close ties to Moscow, and Russian troops responded by invading Georgia.

The countries have not had diplomatic relations since then. The Kremlin insists that it will have no direct contact with Mr. Saakashvili, but has lately expressed more willingness to lessen the pressure on Georgia.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said this month that he was not opposed to restoring air links, though he did not formally propose doing so. A Georgian airline said this week that it would apply to the Russian authorities for permission to fly to Moscow from Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

The pass at Upper Lars is the only legal highway crossing between Russia and territory controlled by Georgia, officials said. There are also crossings in South Ossetia and another separatist Georgian enclave, Abkhazia.

The Upper Lars crossing links Tblisi with the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, and reopens the only direct route from Russia to Armenia, Georgia’s neighbor to the south.

The agreement to open the border was mediated by Swiss diplomats. While it suggested some progress in relations, other events have underscored the tensions.

Georgia this month demolished a World War II memorial in the city of Kutaisi in order to make way for a Parliament building, causing an outcry in Russia, which called the move sacrilegious.

“This is one more attempt to erase the history of the peoples of the former Soviet Union, including the heroic history, from historical memory,” Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said on Wednesday. He suggested that the monument be rebuilt in Moscow.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying the Georgian government revered the memory of World War II veterans, but noted that the memorial was damaged and needed extensive renovation. It also said that Russia had the “immoral habit of permanently interfering in other countries’ internal affairs.”

For Russian officials, the status of such war memorials in other former Soviet republics is a sensitive subject. Relations between Russia and Estonia were enflamed in 2007 when the Estonian authorities moved a prominent memorial.

The Georgia monument also turned into a domestic scandal after a young woman and her 8-year-old daughter were accidentally killed in the demolition blast.

Mr. Saakashvili responded by ending his visit to the Copenhagen climate summit and returning to Georgia, where he dismissed the local governor and ordered an inquiry.