The Council of Ministers relocated to Georgia's capital Tbilisi, where it operated as a de jure government of Abkhazia for almost 13 years.
During this period, the GAIE was led by Tamaz Nadareishvili, until President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili appointed a new chairman, Irakli Alasania, his envoy in the peace talks over Abkhazia.
[1] Malkhaz Akishbaia, a western-educated Abkhaz politician was Chairman of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia from April 2006 to June 2009, when he was succeeded by Giorgi Baramia.
However, the ALP is opposed by the Co-ordinating Council of Refugees from Abkhazia founded in 1996 by Boris Kakubava, an MP in the Abkhazeti faction.
The de facto authorities organised a referendum on 3 October 1999 which approved the current constitution though more than half of the pre-war population expelled from Abkhazia did not take part in voting.
In the elections, Russia supported Raul Khajimba, the prime-minister backed by seriously ailing outgoing separatist President Vladislav Ardzinba.
When supporters of Raul Khajimba seized the building of the Supreme Court and destroyed the protocols from local electoral constituencies new elections were prescribed.
Outgoing president Ardzinba replaced Raul Khajimba as a prime-minister with Nodar Khashba, who, before this appointment served in the Ministry for Extraordinary Situations.
Amid growing tension a meeting on 20 May 2009 of six political parties and war veteran movements held a press conference in Sukhumi to express their concern at the president's imputed plans to "hand over chunks of Abkhazia's national heritage to foreign commercial structures for a long time period."
They described relations with Russia as "based on trust and mutual respect" before adding that the Abkhaz leadership's "hasty and thoughtless decisions" risked fuelling anti-Russian sentiment and domestic political tensions in the run-up to the presidential ballot.
"[3] The Vice President Raul Khadjimba (once an ally of Russia against Sergey Bagapsh) resigned on 28 May 2009, saying he agreed with the criticism the opposition had made.
[4] Subsequently, a conference of opposition parties in July 2009 nominated Raul Khadjimba as their candidate in the Abkhazian presidential election, 2009 scheduled for December of the same year.
[5] The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, European Union and United Nations have continued to insist that Abkhazia must remain part of Georgia, and that at the very least, the many Georgian refugees who fled after the 1992–1993 war must be allowed to return, before any acceptable vote on independence can be held.
After the 2004 removal of Ajarian leader Aslan Abashidze from office after large public protests, Saakashvili suggested that Abkhazia and fellow separatist entity South Ossetia could be reintegrated in the same manner.