Gueorgui Otyrba
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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 in Moscow, receiving his first degree in 1984, as well as a second degree from the Institute of General History in 1990. He was appointed as a Professor in the Department of Modern History at Abkhaz State University in the same year, and through the early 1990s, served as a visiting scholar in a number of universities around the world, including Johns Hopkins University and Maryland University in the United States and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, 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 the Civil Society Development Centre a non-government organization based in the city of Gagra, 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 Minister Sergey 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 by Igor Akhba, and Otyrba has since returned to his prior roles.
Otyrba is a native spaker of Abkhazian and Russian, speaks English fluently, and is also competent in Italian.
| Preceded by: Sergey Shamba | Foreign Minister of Abkhazia 2004 | Succeeded by: Igor Akhba |