Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

[yerazhishda]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

BREAKING NEWS --- Saakashvili's an idiot...err wait...that's not breaking news!

**********************

Georgia Says Leaving CIS
source: http://www.asbarez.com/index.html?sh...40_8/12/2008_1

TBILISI (Combined Sources)-- Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili announced that his embattled nation will leave the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) which was created after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

"We are leaving the CIS for good.....and encourage others to do so," he reportedly told supporters in the capital of Tbilisi in an email sent to Newsmax by Georgian authorities.

The CIS is composed of 15 of the former Soviet republics and has been a loose confederation of economic and political ties. Some of those states, namely Georgia and Ukraine, have repeatedly charged that Moscow has used the association to bully many of the former Soviet states.

Now, with Georgia breaking ranks, the question is: how many more will follow?
Ukraine, perhaps the most important of the former Soviet republics outside Russia -- and a close ally of Georgia -- is said to be seriously considering the Georgian lead. A complete breakup of the CIS could leave Moscow politically isolated around its borders.

Even as Moscow announced a cessation of its military campaign in Georgia, its U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, raised an ominous specter. Churkin, who has repeatedly denied U.S. accusations that Moscow wants to overthrow the Georgian government, did seem to confirm those allegations when he spoke of the Georgian president.
"He is not a man we can do business with," Churkin said Monday, leaving Georgians "to draw the proper conclusions."

The Russian representative also noted that if the French delegation tried to force the Security Council to vote on a cease-fire resolution, he would veto it.

"Why should we vote on something we were not consulted on?" he asked journalists.
U.S./U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that he sensed a softening of the Russian position, but he criticized Russia's continuing attempts to stall any U.N. action.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, perhaps acknowledging the U.N.'s inability to address the Russian-Georgian crisis, remained on vacation at a secure, undisclosed location.

[RSNATION]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13292

August 13, 2008
'Poor Little Georgia' – Not!
The Georgia lobby has hoodwinked the Western media – and it wasn't hard
The commander in chief of America's laptop bombardiers, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, can always be counted on to reveal not only the content of the neoconservative party line, but also, in so many words, the impulse that motivates it. In his latest peroration from his perch at the New York Times, the intellectual architect of our disastrous war in Iraq lays out a rationale for yet another catastrophic blunder in the foreign policy realm, this time in the Caucasus:

"In August 1924, the small nation of Georgia, occupied by Soviet Russia since 1921, rose up against Soviet rule. On Sept. 16, 1924, The Times of London reported on an appeal by the president of the Georgian Republic to the League of Nations. While 'sympathetic reference to his country's efforts was made' in the Assembly, the Times said, 'it is realized that the League is incapable of rendering material aid, and that the moral influence which may be a powerful force with civilized countries is unlikely to make any impression upon Soviet Russia.'

"'Unlikely' was an understatement. Georgians did not enjoy freedom again until 1991."

You get the idea: in Kristol's world, Putin's Russia is Stalin's USSR, and poor, doe-like little Georgia – a bastion of freedom – is in danger of being devoured by the insatiable Russian bear. Meanwhile, the world stands by, helpless, as appeals are made to a nation impervious to the very concept of morality.

To begin with, Kristol's historical analogy is misleading: Georgia in 1924 was very far from a democracy. What he doesn't tell you is that it was under the control of the Mensheviks, a faction of the Russian Social Democrats (later renamed the Communist Party) that lost out to Lenin's Bolsheviks but was in fact very little different from its factional rivals. As the British writer Carl Bechhofer described Georgia's Menshevik regime:

"The Free and Independent Social-Democratic State of Georgia will always remain in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist 'small nation.' Both in territory-snatching outside and bureaucratic tyranny inside, its chauvinism was beyond all bounds."

George Hewitt, a professor of Circassian languages at London University, cites the colorful and well-traveled Bechhofer in an illuminating essay that lays out the grave error underlying American policy in the region:

"In the hope of avoiding a proliferation of an unpredictable number of small states, the international community in its collective wisdom decreed that it would recognize only the USSR's constituent union-republics and would, thus, not give any encouragement to the yearning for self-determination that characterized some ethnic minorities living in regions endowed with only lower level autonomy according to the Soviet administrative system (such as the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia and the Autonomous Region of South Ossetia, both lower-status entities within the union-republic of Soviet Georgia). It was a huge irony that, in adopting this stance, the West was effectively enshrining the divisions created for his fiefdom by none other than the Soviet dictator Iosep Besarionis-dze Dzhughashvili, a Georgian known to the wider world as Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin."

Aside from memorializing Stalin's policy of imprisoning ethnic minorities within larger administrative entities, refusing to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states allows the U.S. and the European community to maintain the fiction of Russian "expansionism." According to Washington, the Russians invaded "Georgia"; Saakashvili's invasion of South Ossetia doesn't qualify as aggression, since how can you invade your own country? South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia, you see. Just like a small mammal is part of the anaconda that swallowed it whole.

Hewitt goes on to point out:

"Had the Soviet Union collapsed during the first decade of its existence in the 1920s before Abkhazia was reduced in status by fiat of Stalin in February 1931 from being a fully-fledged republic, which entered the Transcaucasian Federation on 13 December 1922 in treaty-alliance with Georgia, to that of an autonomous republic within Georgia, and had the then League of Nations adopted the same principle of recognition later practiced by its successor, the United Nations, then Abkhazia would for decades have enjoyed independence and membership in its own right of the said international community."

The same goes for Ossetia, which is today split into North and South, with the latter under the Georgian heel – as placed there by the half-Ossetian (on his father's side), half-Georgian Stalin.

Readers of Hewitt's 1998 book, The Abkhazians: A Handbook, will note how effectively he explodes Kristol's myth of poor little Georgia, whose supposedly "democratic" history reflects its present "pro-Western" orientation and general worthiness:

"The aggressive politics of the government of Georgia towards Abkhazia occasioned extreme displeasure among the local Abkhazian, Armenian, Russian, Greek, and a significant proportion of the Kartvelian peoples, which actually helped to facilitate the establishment of Soviet power in the region on March 4th, 1921."

The fall of Menshevik communism in Georgia was celebrated by the captive mini-nations of the region "as a deliverance from the repression and meddling of the Georgian Republic." Things have remained pretty much unchanged since 1921 – albeit not in the way Kristol would have us believe.

While Kristol sentimentalizes the old Georgian republic, its Menshevik founders and leaders were, as Hewitt points out, unapologetic authoritarians:

"The politics of this state was quite accurately characterized by one of its eminent activists, the jurist-internationalist Zurab Avalov (Avalishvili). In his book The Independence of Georgia in International Politics, 1918-1921 (Paris, 1924), he remarked, 'At the start of 1921, Georgia had in the person of its government and in the shape of the Constituent Assembly a simple creature of party organization … Georgian democracy 1917-1921, a form of social-democratic dictatorship (i.e., of the right wing of Marxism), was a period of preparation for the triumph in Georgia of Soviet dictatorship."

This dictatorial tradition is today carried on by President Mikheil Saakashvili, who unleashed police on demonstrators, injuring 500 people, during the hotly contested elections and shut down independent media with the same alacrity displayed by his Menshevik predecessors. It is little short of astonishing that Kristol holds up this smarmy regime of small-time hoodlums with big-time regional ambitions as some kind of model, the ideal U.S. ally whose fate we might even go to war over.

Georgia, in Kristol's view, is worthy not only of U.S. support, but of membership in an imaginary "League of Democracies," a neocon project touted by John McCain and pushed by the neocon-dominated wing of the GOP as the "conservative" answer to the United Nations. In short, NATO writ large, albeit with an ideological gloss such as only Kristol (or a Marxist) could bring to it.

No, that's not a misprint: I wrote Marxist, and meant it. The whole flavor of Kristol's screed calling for U.S. support to Georgia, with its appeals to emotion interwoven with bogus historical analogies, reeks of the ideologue's sweaty-browed rhetoric. He is like a little Lenin, exhorting us to follow the bright flag of "democratic" internationalism to the very ends of the earth, which is surely where South Ossetia is located, as least as far as Americans are concerned. One hears, in Kristol's exhortations, the hectoring tone of the old Soviet commissar, albeit of the Menshevik rather than the Bolshevik variety, and this brings to mind a point made by the late Murray N. Rothbard in his justly famous 1992 speech to the John Randolph Club:

"When I was growing up, I found that the main argument against laissez-faire, and for socialism, was that socialism and communism were inevitable: 'You can't turn back the clock!' they chanted, 'you can't turn back the clock.' But the clock of the once-mighty Soviet Union, the clock of Marxism-Leninism, a creed that once mastered half the world, is not only turned back, but lies dead and broken forever. But we must not rest content with this victory. For though Marxism-Bolshevism is gone forever, there still remains, plaguing us everywhere, its evil cousin: call it 'soft Marxism,' 'Marxism-Humanism,' 'Marxism-Bernsteinism,' 'Marxism-Trotskyism,' 'Marxism-Freudianism,' well, let's just call it 'Menshevism,' or 'social democracy.'

"Social democracy is still here in all its variants, defining our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right. We are now trapped, in America, inside a Menshevik fantasy, with the narrow bounds of respectable debate set for us by various brands of Marxists. It is now our task, the task of the resurgent right, of the paleo movement, to break those bonds, to finish the job, to finish off Marxism forever."

Of course, the neoconservatives, of which Kristol is the ringleader, came from the left side of the spectrum and trace their historical antecedents all the way back to the schismatic Marxist sects of the 1930s and the epic battles between Trotsky and Stalin (they were partisans of the former). They were, in short, the American Mensheviks of their time. In their hegira from the far left to the neocon right – a more fully documented odyssey exists only for that undertaken by Ulysses – they yet retain the telling characteristics of their Menshevik heritage, which Kristol proudly upholds to this day.

At a time when people are losing their homes and economists are beginning to talk about another Great Depression, Kristol's proposal to send millions more in "aid" to Georgia is obscene. Now that's real anti-Americanism – sending taxpayer dollars to a Georgian despot while people in this country are hurting. It's also political suicide for the Republicans to raise the prospect of intervening in Georgia's internal problems when we're already bogged down in the Iraq quagmire, from which there seems little hope of early extrication. So much for Kristol, the grand strategist of the GOP. He and his fellow neocons are dragging down the Republican Party along with their own sinking credibility.

The myth of poor little Georgia, a newborn and promising "democracy" threatened, bullied, and battered by Putin-the-reincarnation-of-Stalin is bogus from beginning to end. It is a Bizarro World rendition of what is really happening in South Ossetia and the wider region: that is, a curiously and consistently inverted version of reality in which up is down, black is white, and the Georgians did not invade South Ossetia, killing thousands and driving many more northward.

According to our "free" media, the Georgians didn't invade the land of the Ossetians – they merely tried to "retake" it, as a child would bloodlessly and even quite playfully retake a shiny red ball from a playmate. Those evil Russkies, on the other hand, invaded, plunged into, and escalated their attack on Georgia. At least, those are the words our "reporters" are using. As George Orwell emphasized, the corruption of language is a form of control, and the American media in collusion with the government is expert at this, especially in its war reporting.

That's why Antiwar.com's continued survival is such a value for our growing audience: we give you the facts without the Washington-centric spin that comes with "mainstream" media coverage. You know you can come here to find out what's really happening out there in the wide world. You also know that we aren't afraid to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom. Maybe you remember how often that collective "wisdom" has been wrong.

The news media – and, not coincidentally, the War Party – isn't interested in reporting the facts. All they care about is the "narrative" – one not necessarily based on reality, designed to convince the public that what our rulers are doing and planning is right and just. The Kristolian narrative of poor, little, pro-Western Georgia is a tall tale. Georgian "free market democracy" exists in the same alternate universe as Iraq's famed "weapons of mass destruction" and the Piltdown Man, but you won't see many other media outlets saying that.

I want to urge all of my readers, especially those who log in with some regularity, to contribute to our end-of-summer fundraising drive, which, as I write, is in its second day. We still have a very long way to go, and I can't impress upon you the urgency of our appeal. The foreign policy crisis has been ongoing ever since 9/11, and it still shows very little sign of letting up. We seem to be approaching the breaking point, where the various crises in different parts of the world are seeming to converge into one mega-crisis: the threat of a new world war, involving most of the world's major powers, is a real possibility. And it is a near certainty as long as the neocons are anywhere near the levers of power in the U.S.

Please, consider giving more than you usually give, considering how grave the prospects for peace have become. The world, I fear, is slowly but surely darkening, with the bright promise of the post-Cold War era now just a distantly flickering memory, the echo of a lost peace.

Let us pray that peace is not lost forever, and that, once lost, it can be recovered. We can do it, and you can help – but we can't do it alone. Contribute today.

~ Justin Raimondo

[Armanen]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Sappy sh*t



Georgians in America watch the violence back home
Aug 12, 2008 (8:47p CDT)
By VERENA DOBNIK (Associated Press Writer)

NEW YORK - Khatuna Baghaturia has spent countless hours in the last week on the phone with relatives in her native country and watching the bloodshed on TV. The sight of Russian troops laying waste to Georgia was all the more horrifying because her three children are there now - on vacation.

"Every bomb - we hope it's going to be the last," said Baghaturia, who lives in Brooklyn and whose children have managed to stay out of harm's way. "It's like a bad dream."

The 37-year-old is among about 20,000 Georgians living in the United States and about 5,000 in New York City - home to the nation's largest Georgian population, according to the country's New York consulate.

They have spent the past five days making frantic phone calls home and praying in crowded churches in Brooklyn, where Georgians are scattered in different neighborhoods.

Baghaturia is a former teacher who now runs a restaurant called Tbilisi in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, where she says neighborhood Russians have been flocking for days to offer their support. Brooklyn is home to a sizable Russian population, creating the odd juxtaposition of people from two warring countries living side by side.

"They try to support us, they understand us, they come and say that, you know, we are really sorry, and we are your friends - and we are, we are," Baghaturia said.

Katya Ivanova, a Russian-born architect who lives in Ocean Parkway, in Brooklyn, said she supports the Georgians "because we Russians remember those days when we were quite friendly. I vacationed almost every summer on the Black Sea (in Georgia). They're great people, so friendly."

She added, "I hope intelligent Russians are against their government. And I think most Russian-Americans support the Georgians. The Russian government will always be the same - even if its name changes."

With tears in her eyes, the cook at Tbilisi prepared the kitchen Tuesday to make her country's "comfort" food - kachapuri, a kind of Georgian cheese pizza that warmed tables as daily life moved on under a sunny Brooklyn sky.

"I'm scared for my children and my grandchildren," said Leila Mikeladze, the 46-year-old cook whose grown daughter, son and pregnant daughter-in-law, as well as three grandchildren, are skirting dangers not far from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

Her parents, caught in the heart of the conflict, cannot be reached by telephone; Mikeladze relies on calls from her children for news.

Baghataria, her husband and staff rely on Internet phone connections, including video images, to keep track of events hour to hour. She hopes her children - two daughters ages 19 and 13, and a 7-year-old son - remain safe and make it back to New York for the start of the academic year.

But that doesn't solve the problems of Georgia, whose President Mikhail Saakashvili is a lawyer educated at New York's Columbia University. Baghataria says that despite Russia ordering a halt to the war, friends and relatives reported that bombs were still going off Tuesday.

"We need the whole country to be saved and all Georgians to be alive," said Baghataria.

On Saturday, a rally at the United Nations drew Georgians carrying signs that read: "Hands off Georgia" and "Stop Evil Russia."

Protesters included members of St. Nino's Georgian Orthodox church choir who formed a circle to sing their native songs. A room on the third floor of a Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn's Williamsburg serves as the chapel of the church on most Sundays.

In the meantime, Georgians - including ethnic Russians - gather at places like the Tbilisi restaurant to talk and eat together, make calls, and share hopes for a quick end to the conflict.

Last weekend, there was no entertainment at the Tbilisi restaurant.

"We said, 'People are dying, we can't sing and dance here,'" said Baghataria.

She and her husband came to the United States in 1999, leaving behind a shattered Georgian economy - and their children, whom the couple didn't see for four years until their U.S. immigration status was settled.

"I still hope that everything is going to be OK," she said, smiling faintly.

At her Manhattan apartment and studio, artist Rusudan Grigolia spends anxious, sleepless days and nights watching TV, making phone calls to Georgia and keeping in touch by computer.

She flew back from Georgia last week, leaving behind her daughter, a fashion designer in the capital known as Nina K, as well as her 3-month-old granddaughter, her mother and her sister.

"I wish I didn't leave," said Grigolia. "I wish I could go back there and be with them."

She has "lots of Russian friends, and I love them," she said, adding, "I would not expect from Russian government to be so greedy and to be so cruel."

Echoing Republican presidential candidate John McCain, she said, "We all are Georgians now. And I believe the whole world should feel like that because if Russia wins now in Georgia, that means that we all lose - not only Georgians."

http://kai03.qwest.com/WindowsLive/Media/News/NewsDetail.aspx?cat=National&[email protected]&client=gadget&qid=A19F86871E790DF0ABB86693FFFFFFFF

[yerazhishda]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Western media is so f'ucked up it makes me want to puke. Morals are relative to what can be gained politcally and economically, depending on the situation.

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

It's not over yet!
----------------------------

Georgian villages burned and looted as Russian tanks advance
Mood of panic as eyewitnesses say ceasefire being broken by Russian military and 'irregulars'



Russian tanks near the Georgian city of Zugdidi.

Villages in Georgia were being burned and looted as Russian tanks and soldiers followed by "irregulars" advanced from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, eyewitnesses said today.

"People are fleeing, there is a mood of absolute panic. The idea there is a ceasefire is ridiculous," Luke Harding, the Guardian's correspondent, said.

Earlier, witnesses reported a military convoy heading towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi, but it later turned off the road and headed back towards South Ossetia. Russia denied any advance.

Harding, watching villages near Gori burn, said witnesses had told him Russian military, including at least 25 tanks, had moved from the Russian-controlled South Ossetia into the villages.

"They asked villagers to hang white flags or handkerchiefs outside their houses if they did not want to be shot, they say."

The tanks had passed through the village of Rekha at about 11.20am local time. "Behind them (say eyewitnesses) is a whole column of irregulars who locals say are Chechens, Cossacks and Ossetians.

"Eyewitnesses say they are looting, killing and burning. These irregulars have killed three people and set fire to villages. They have been taking away young boys and girls," said Harding, watching smoke rise from another village, Karaleti.

He said he had witnessed people fleeing in the direction of Tbilisi. "For three hours there were people fleeing in cars, I saw one with 11 people and a Lada with eight people in it." He had also seen people fleeing on a horse and cart and a tractor.

It appeared that Russian tanks had entered Gori, targeting military installations, some built with Nato money.
Link to this audio

The ministry of foreign affairs in Georgia claimed four civilian cars with murdered passengers "were reported to have been seen in the village of Tedotsminda near Gori."

Russia's deputy chief of general staff, Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitisyn, said earlier today that no tanks were in Gori. He claimed Russians went into the town to implement the truce with local officials but could find none.

A reporter from the Associated Press also said fighters from the other separatist region of Abkhazia had moved into Georgian territory, planting their flag on a bridge over the Inguri river and saying they were laying claim to what had historically been Abkhazian territory.

Earlier, Georgia said its troops had pulled out of Abkhazia after the Kremlin had laid down humiliating peace terms as the price for halting the Russian invasion and its four-day rout of Georgian forces.

The ceasefire required both sides to return to positions they held before the conflict started in South Ossetia last week.

The key demands are that the Georgian leader pledges to abjure all use of force to resolve Georgia's territorial disputes with the two breakaway pro-Russian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia; and that Georgian forces withdraw entirely from South Ossetia and are no longer part of the joint "peacekeeping" contingent there with Russian and local forces.

The Russian president, Dimitry Medvedev, also insisted the populations of the two regions had to be allowed to vote on whether they wanted to join Russia, prefiguring a possible annexation that would enfeeble Georgia and leave its leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, looking crushed.

Russian leaders claimed Georgian forces perpetrated atrocities against civilians when Saakashvili gave the go-ahead last week for the bungled attempt to recapture South Ossetia.

The gamble triggered the onslaught which the US state department yesterday described as "plain and simple blatant aggression on the part of Russia".

Georgian forces have been part of the peacekeeping force in South Ossetia for the past 15 years. But Russian leaders declared yesterday the Georgians would not return, and South Ossetia would be under Russian control.

"They shot their brother Russian peacekeepers, then they finished them off with bayonets, so we are not going to see them there any more," said Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to Nato in Brussels.

While Nato leaders in Brussels stressed that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were part of Georgia, Medvedev encouraged the secession of the two breakaway regions.

"Ossetians and Abkhaz must respond to that question taking their history into account, including what happened in the past few days," he said.

Western officials at Nato, in the EU, in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and in Washington, while calling for an immediate ceasefire, also demanded that Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity be upheld.

Following a meeting of Nato states yesterday, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary general, accused Russia of not respecting Georgia's territorial integrity. "Abkhazia and Ossetia, if I mention territorial integrity, are to the best of my knowledge part of Georgia." He added that "Nato is not seeking a direct role or a military role in this conflict".

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...eorgia.russia7

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Georgian villages looted as conflict ceasefire threatened

GORI, Georgia (AFP) — Separatist fighters and Russian troops looted and set homes ablaze in Georgian territory on Wednesday amid fears over a fragile ceasefire that ended five days of bitter conflict.

Despite a French-brokered truce agreed Tuesday by the leaders of the two countries, Russia faced mounting criticism in the West for its military offensive.

Russian armoured vehicles patrolled Gori, the flashpoint Georgian town between the capital and South Ossetia, the breakaway region at the centre of the conflict.

Hundreds of South Ossetian rebels with some Russian army personnel went house-to-house in villages near Gori. They set houses ablaze and looted buildings, witnesses said.

The body of a man, his mouth caked with blood, lay in a street in the village of Dzardzanis and nearby the body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned mini-van, an AFP journalist reported.

The Human Rights Watch group said its researchers in South Ossetia had on Tuesday "witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians."

About 60 tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other vehicles were seen on the road leading east from Gori to the capital. An AFP reporter saw Russian troops shouting: "Tbilisi, Tbilisi" but their destination was unclear.

General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the Russian deputy chief of staff, denied any Russian forces were heading for Tbilisi. The Georgian government also said it did not believe the convoy was headed for Tbilisi, though President Mikheil Saakashvili told CNN television he believed Russia wanted to surround the capital.

The Russian military said its forces were in Gori to disarm Georgian munitions.

President Dmitry Medvedev halted the Russian military offensive -- ordered in response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia week -- on Tuesday and French President Nicolas Sarkozy negotiated a ceasefire with Medvedev and Saakashvili.

Russia accused Georgia of violating the truce by failing to pursue an "active withdrawal" from South Ossetia.

"Georgian forces have begun their pull-back toward Tbilisi but no active withdrawal has yet been observed," General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the staff of the armed forces, told reporters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would withdraw from Georgia only after Georgian troops had returned to their barracks.

The United States, Georgia's main Western ally, cancelled joint military exercises with Russia due to start Friday in the Sea of Japan and is considering other protest measures, US officials said. France and Britain were also to take part.

"In the wake of this conflict, there is no way that we can proceed with this joint exercise at this time," the official said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "I can assure you that Russia's international reputation and what role Russia can play in the international community is very much at stake here."

EU foreign ministers reviewed the crisis at a meeting in Brussels. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the European Union should reassess relations with Russia.

"The aggressive Russian force beyond South Ossetian borders has been something that really shocked many people," he said.

"The sight of Russian tanks in Gori, Russian tanks in Senaki, the Russian blockade of Poti, the Georgian port, are a chilling reminder of times that I think we had hoped had gone by."

EU foreign ministers said they would contribute to any international peacekeeping force.

Russian troops and tanks poured into Georgia on Friday after the Georgian army launched an offensive to regain control of South Ossetia, a Moscow-backed region which broke from Tbilisi in the early 1990s.

There was considerable scepticism among Russian newspapers about whether the conflict was really over.

Even as Medvedev announced an end to the Russian operation "it immediately became clear that in fact the confrontation was hardly finished," wrote the daily Kommersant.

"It is too early to reach unequivocal conclusions about whether the agreement reached by Medvedev and Sarkozy will really put an end to military actions in South Ossetia," wrote the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.

"Saakashvili is characterised by his unpredictability and a lack of willingness to respect agreements," it added.

Russia claims the conflict has left more than 2,000 civilians dead, while the United Nations estimates some 100,000 people have been forced from their homes.

The Georgian health minister put the death toll in Georgia at 175 people, mainly civilians. Russia said that 74 of its troops had been killed.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jNBg25n8qYjQyiQ-osgnmBJH6xSQ

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Sailor says 4 Russian ships return to Crimea from Abkhazia coast
18:59 | 13/ 08/ 2008


SEVASTOPOL, August 13 (RIA Novosti) - Four Russian ships have returned from waters off Abkhazia to their Black Sea Fleet base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, a crewman said Wednesday.

Ships from Russia's Black Sea Fleet patrolled the waters off the Georgian coast during the Russian "peace enforcement" operation that began after Georgia launched an offensive in breakaway South Ossetia on August 8.

The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, from whom Russia rents the Sevastopol base, said Sunday that it could bar Russian ships involved in the conflict from entering the port.

Former Black Sea Fleet commander Vladimir Komoyedov said the Ukrainian warning was nothing but another provocation.

"Kiev is most likely to have decided to shift from international-level charges against the Black Sea Fleet to routine accusations, which have become a sort of norm, of illegal movements of units or warships, not reporting etc.," he said.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree Wednesday stating that Russia had to inform the Ukrainian authorities of all movements by warships and aircraft from its Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet.

According to the decree, Russia must ask permission from Kiev for the movement of its warships and aircraft beyond Ukrainian borders. Permission is to be sought no later than 72 hours prior to any planned movements.

From http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080813/116015659.html

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Captured map shows Georgia planned to invade Abkhazia

Russian troops have discovered what they believe are plans for an invasion of Abkhazia in a captured Georgian command post vehicle. On Wednesday, Abkhazian armed forces succeeded in pushing Georgian troops out of the Upper Kodori Gorge in anticipation of such an attack.

For the past few days the spotlight has been on Georgia's other breakaway republic, South Ossetia.

But the captured documents apparently outline steps for the invasion of Abkhazia, a region twice the size of South Ossetia, bordering the Black Sea.

From http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28931

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Georgia's Israeli arms point Russia to Iran
By Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM - With the eruption of fighting between Russia and Georgia, Israel has found itself in an awkward position as a result of its arms sales to Georgia. Israel is now caught between its friendly relations with Georgia and its fear that the continued sale of weaponry will spark Russian retribution in the form of increased arms sales to Iran and Syria.

After fighting broke out late last week between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Israel's Foreign Ministry over the weekend recommended suspending the sale of all weapons and defense-related equipment to Georgia, the daily Ha'aretz newspaper reported.

The paper quoted an unnamed senior official saying that Israel needed "to be very careful and sensitive these days. The Russians are selling many arms to Iran and Syria and there is no need to offer them an excuse to sell even more advanced weapons."

Israel's immediate concern is that Russia will proceed with the sale of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, which would help it defend its nuclear installations from aerial attack. Israel, like the US, believes that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing a bomb, and Israeli leaders have refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike aimed at derailing Iran's nuclear aspirations.

Israel recently conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece that was widely viewed as a rehearsal for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear installations. But with the US and Europe resorting to diplomatic pressure in the form of sanctions to deter Iran, Israel is loathe to anger Russia, which until now has opposed harsher sanctions on Tehran.

Israel's relations with Georgia have been close, partly because there is a large Georgian xxxish community in Israel. In recent years, ties have also taken on a military dimension, with military industries in Israel supplying Georgia with some US$200 million worth of equipment since 2000. This has included remotely piloted planes, rockets, night-vision equipment, other electronic systems and training by former senior Israeli officers.

"Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili told Israel's Army Radio in Hebrew shortly after the fighting erupted.

Israel is not a major supplier of arms to Georgia, with the US and France supplying Tbilisi with most of its weaponry. But the arms transfers have attracted media attention partly because of the role played by some high-profile Israeli figures, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo, who conducted business in Georgia on behalf of Israel Military Industries.

According to media reports, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, a senior commander in the 2006 Lebanon war who resigned after the release of a highly critical report on the way the war was conducted, served as an adviser to Georgian security forces.

Further attention was drawn to the Israel-Georgia arms trade earlier this year when a Russian jet shot down an Israeli-made drone being operated by the Georgians.

Even though weapons transfers were modest in scope, Russian diplomats began increasingly relaying to Israel their annoyance over its military aid to Georgia, including the special forces training provided by security experts. Israel decided about a year ago to limit military exports to defensive equipment and training.

New contracts weren't approved as the arms sales were scaled back. Georgia's request for 200 advanced Israeli-made Merkava tanks, for example, was turned down.

There were reports in Israel that the sale of the tanks didn't go through because of a disagreement over the commission that was to be paid as part of the deal. But Amos Yaron, the former director general of the Defense Ministry, insisted it had to do with "security-diplomatic considerations" - a clear reference to the sensitivity of the arms sales to Georgia. Israel, Yaron added, didn't want "to harm Russian interests too much".

Asked about the motivation to initially engage in the sale of weaponry to Georgia despite concerns it might anger Russia, Yaron replied: "We did see that there was potential for a conflagration in the region but Georgia is a friendly state, it's supported by the US, and so it was difficult to refuse."

From http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH14Ak02.html

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Russians are claiming to have shot down another Georgian (Israeli) UAV Tuesday night.