TBILISI, Georgia — The remote Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has denied recognizing the independence of Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, contradicting a statement made by an Abkhaz official days earlier. “There was no declaration of Abkhazia’s independence from Vanuatu,” Donald Kalpokas, Vanuatu’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday by telephone from New York. On Wednesday, Abkhazia’s foreign minister, Maxim Gvindzhia, said Vanuatu, an island chain with some 235,000 […]