- Gueorgui Otyrba
Infobox Officeholder
honorific-prefix =
name = Gueorgui Otyrba
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imagesize = 200px
order = 6thMinister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia (acting)
term_start = June 2004
term_end = July 2004
deputy =
president =Vladislav Ardzinba
predecessor =Sergei Shamba
successor =Igor Akhba
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footnotes =Gueorgui Otyrba is an Abkhaz politician and academic. He was the acting foreign minister of the de facto independent, though internationally unrecognised Republic of Abkhazia during June and July 2004.
Otyrba studied history at the
Institute of History and Archives inMoscow , receiving his first degree in 1984, as well as a second degree from theInstitute of General History in 1990. He was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Modern History atAbkhaz State University in the same year, and through the early 1990s, served as a visiting scholar in a number of universities around the world, includingJohns Hopkins University andMaryland University in theUnited States and theHebrew University of Jerusalem inIsrael , often dealing in topics associated with the civil war in his homeland.These experiences saw Otyrba take an interest in foreign policy, and in 1996, he underwent a course in mediation and human rights monitoring in
Austria . He became involved in trying to establish dialogue between the two sides, and in 1997, was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister of Abkhazia. In the same year, he became Director of theCivil Society Development Centre a non-government organization based in the city ofGagra , a position which he held for approximately a year. Otyrba continued to both work in academia and serve as Deputy Foreign Minister for several years, and when long-serving Foreign MinisterSergey Shamba resigned to run in the 2004 elections, Otyrba was a natural choice to fill in as a temporary replacement. However, the position only lasted for two months before he was replaced byIgor Akhba , and Otyrba has since returned to his prior roles.Otyrba is a native speaker of Abkhazian and Russian, speaks English fluently, and is also competent in Italian.
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