Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a French-brokered six point peace agreement to end it's conflict with Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. "The president informed participants of the security council meeting that he had just now signed the six-point plan," said the Kremlin's chief spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia will pull out troops from the conflict zone in Georgia once additional security arrangements are put in place.
The ceasefire agreement signed by Russia and Georgia states that Moscow's troops will continue to implement additional security measures on a temporary basis pending the arrival of an international peacekeeping mechanism.
"The (Russian) president issued an order to the relevant authorities to start the adoption of extra security measures envisaged in the six-point plan," Mr Lavrov told reporters.
"As these security measures are implemented, the withdrawal of forces sent to carry out this reinforcement operation will be carried out."
Mr Medvedev and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili have now both signed the French-brokered peace deal, but Mr Lavrov said the document signed by the Georgian leader was missing a key introductory part.
"The document signed by the Georgian president differs from the one which was agreed," he said. "It totally omits the introductory part saying that these principles are supported by Russia and France and calling on all sides to sign them."
He said Russia was discussing the matter with Georgia and that it would be settled through diplomatic channels.
Mr Lavrov said Russia had started consultations at the United Nations on international efforts to end the conflict.
"Additional numbers of monitors should observe the security zone. We will carry
out our obligations under the deal, depending on how other parties carry them out," he said.
Russia received a copy of the ceasefire document signed by Georgia this morning, according to the Interfax news agency.
The Ministry said the document, sent by the United States, was identical to the one signed already in Moscow by leaders of the separatist regions at the heart of the conflict, Interfax reported.
Russia has denied continuing military operations in the country. Georgia's Interior Ministry claimed this morning that Russian troops had blown up a railway bridge about 45 km from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said troops had destroyed the bridge in the Kaspi region west of Tbilisi, "paralysing the Georgian railway network".
However, Russia's General Staff denied the accusation.
"We are now in peacetime. Why should we be blowing up bridges when our job is to restore ?" Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General Staff, told a daily official military briefing.
"This therefore can only be yet another completely unverified statement. We are not conducting bombardments. I can say with full responsibility that this cannot be the case."
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will privately meet US, Russian and Georgian ambassadors today to discuss the cease-fire accord agreed yesterday.
Mr Ban has been unable to reach President Medvedev after earlier speaking with his Georgian counterpart, according to a report by AFP, citing Farhan Haq, a UN spokesman.
The UN estimates the number of people displaced by the conflict is approaching 115,000, according to a statement on its Web site yesterday.
Two days ago, the UN children's fund, Unicef, put the number of refugees at about 100,000. The latest figures show that 30,000 people uprooted from South Ossetia remain in Russia, while as many as 15,000 fled south into undisputed Georgian territory, the UN said, citing data provided by Russian and Georgian officials.
About 68,000 refugees are displaced in the rest of Georgia, according to the statement. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres will visit Georgia and Russia next week to discuss the ongoing operations.
Human Rights Watch said in an Aug. 14 report that both sides made ``indiscriminate attacks'' on civilians.
A doctor at the main hospital in South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, told Human Rights Watch that the clinic handled 44 corpses and 273 wounded between Aug. 6 and Aug. 12, including civilian and military casualties, the New York-based group said.
"Human Rights Watch cannot definitely attribute specific battle damage to a particular belligerent, but witness accounts and the timing of the damage would point to Georgian fire accounting for much of the damage described'' in Tskhinvali, the report said.
Russian and South Ossetian officials earlier said as many as 2,000 civilians died in the fighting. Human Rights Watch reported seeing houses that had "clearly just been torched" in South Ossetia's ethnic Georgian villages.
The group said in a separate report on Aug. 15 that its researchers uncovered evidence Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas of Georgia, killing at least 11 civilians and injuring dozens.
No country has recognised South Ossetia or Abkhazia since they broke away from Georgia in wars after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia has had peacekeepers in both regions since then and expelled all Georgian forces from the territories in recent fighting.
"Unfortunately, after what happened, it's unlikely that the Abkhaz and South Ossetians can live in a single state with Georgia," Medvedev said.
"Or some absolutely titanic efforts must be made to resolve this conflict."
He met Aug. 14 in Moscow with South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity and Sergei Bagapsh, the leader of Abkhazia, and told them that Russia would support the regions' decisions about their future status.
From Irish Times by Bloomberg, Reuters
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But what has been the aim of Russia's involvement in Georgia? I am not sure it is just about Russia exerting 'power' in the region. In a sense it is but not purely for the sake of exerting that power. President Bush says the "territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected". Many might correctly say it is now a bit too late for that, after the carve-up of the former Yugoslavia by the Americans, ably assisted by elements within the EU. Kosovo, of course, being the latest in Western-backed declarations of independence.It is Mr Bush, his predecessor and their disciples in Europe who have let the separatist genie out of the bottle. And once genies get out, they rarely, if ever, go back. Surely, the Russians have the right to protect the South Ossetians and assist them in their quest for self-determination. Of course, am I not being devilishly naive to suspect that situations mirror one another in terms of democratic self-determination. When it suits us, you say. How are the Spaniards doing in recognising Kosovo (difficult one that for them)?
The players in this game are all too similar. South Ossetia as Kosovo, it's separatist fighters as a KLA, Georgia as Serbia, and an energetic Russia acting as NATO. Of course, the similarities might not be perfect but the parallels to be drawn are striking.
President Bush stated that 'bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century. Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations, or continue to pursue a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation'. In the same speech he explains how 'Georgia has sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq to help others achieve the liberty that they struggled so hard to attain'. If you are somewhat confused you should be. Democratic nations are free to do what they want because they are democratically elected and thus serve in the interests of the majority of their population. But the will of the nation being attacked is ignored, provided that they are not a democracy, which means they have no right to be heard. Puzzled? I certainly am. Rhetoric and propaganda are starting to take root in a serious way and I'm feeling a little nostalgic for the Cold War. Times were simpler then and we always had an enemy to blame (or at least knew who the enemy was). The post-Cold War era has been far too confusing for my liking and often actions of supposed allies seemed questionable given the changed security paradigms. Global Jihad was hot for a while providing us with some common enemy but its form was far too intangible to grasp (not to mention being notoriously difficult to target with our own WMDs). With the slow emergence of China as a great power and the thunderous reawakening of Russia I can look forward to a time in which things once more become black and white.
1 comment:
i remember before i left the Uk for georgia, someone warned me that the kosovo thing could potentially spill over to where i was, but i just didnt believe it. geographically it didnt make much sense, kosovo independence seemed so far away and georgia was doing so well, economically, socially, even starting to look a bit democratic. I was patently wrong. youre bang on the money about the independence genie, it has well and truly got out. chaos follows in its wake. but theres more to it i think.... the genie is a useful rhetorical tool- along with the term genocide that is being thrown around- rather than a serious motivation. although thats probably not what the kokoity was told when this started. its just coincidence that this is the best opportunity ever to show russian annoyance about kosovo using georgia, misha handed it to putin on a plate
the reason i say its not just the independence genie is because that would fail to account for the pshychological significance of georgia to russia- georgia is like afghanistan to the soviets, or vietnam to the us. i think what we're seeing is in many ways the new domino doctrine of the post soviet space. russia does not want to lose georgia to nato and if it does, it is going to make sure its a banana republic first.....thats not why this war started but it certainly explains a lot in russias countenance since. by destroying our infrastructure and contnuing to occupy georgia, russia is making a strong statement- this is our space, its on our borders and we can do as we like. dont underestimate us. maybe we rolled over on kosovo but we wont roll over again.
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