Britannia Radio

NATO debates the Caucasian disaster today
Sarkozy was naive and allowed himself to be hoodwinked by the
Russians, who had long planned the invasion of Georgia and are now
roaming at will in Georgia instead of executing their promised
withdrawal. They are determined to humiliate the Georgian state so
that it becomes a mere vassal of Russia. In the process they now
indirectly control the economies of Armenia and Azerbaijan as well
for almost all the exports of those countries go through Georgia or
Russia. . The Ukraine will be next.

I recommend a study of the maps of this part of the world. The
Ukraine was doubled in size by the old USSR and is vastly bigger than
its historic size. This means that the Russian Black Sea fleet has
no port of its own except the small landlocked Taganrog on the Sea of
Azov [top right!] ; it rents the naval base of Sebastopol in the
Crimea from the Ukraine. If that is not a recipe for conflict I do
not know what is! I hope the EU and NATO have contingency plans for
that war! (Though I doubt that they’ve thought of that !)

Meanwhile Germany , not content with having medddled in the Caucasus
in recent years, is now proposing to involve Turkmenistan in the area
of supposed EU concern under the phrase “ neighbourhood policy”.
Since Turkmenistan goes as far east as Afghanistan one might wonder
if the term ‘neighbour’ was not being stretched a bit

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THE GUARDIAN 19.8.08
No sign of military withdrawal as Russian armour stays put
· Tbilisi says tank columns are edging into heartland
· Moscow insists pullout has already begun
Luke Harding and Tom Parfitt in Gori and Julian Borger in Tbilisi

Russia last night continued to occupy large swaths of Georgia in
defiance of an EU-brokered ceasefire deal, with no sign of
significant troop withdrawals.

Despite claims by Moscow that a pullout had begun, Russian forces
could be seen across most of the country, and Georgian officials
claimed that armoured columns had tried to push further into the
mountainous heartland, towards Borjomi in the south and Sachkhere in
the west.

"We could leave here in two minutes. But we've had no orders to pull
out," said a Russian soldier manning a checkpoint yesterday about 25
miles west of the capital, Tbilisi. He knew nothing about a ceasefire.

Georgia's foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, said Russian troops
had razed a Georgian military base at the western city of Senaki.
"Practically speaking there are so far no signs of withdrawal at all.
What they're trying to do is to widen their territorial presence,"
Tkeshelashvili said before flying to Brussels to appeal for support
from Nato foreign ministers today. "They have pretty much
unrestricted freedom of action. They are trying to show us they are
masters on the ground right now."

She said she would call for punitive diplomatic measures against
Russia, excluding Moscow from international institutions, if Moscow
refused to comply.

A Georgian interior ministry spokesman said columns of Russian
armoured vehicles were stopped by police roadblocks outside Borjomi
and Sachkhere and agreed to turn back. But another column broke
through a similar roadblock west of Tbilisi.

One report circulated yesterday evening suggested the Russian forces
would only begin their promised withdrawal after nightfall, and
Georgian officials said they would review the situation in the
morning after further international pressure.
"I might be naive, but I'm still hopeful that a very strong, common
effort by Europe and the United States will be effective in the
withdrawing of Russian troops from territory of Georgia,"
Tkeshelashvili said. "We'll see how well grounded my expectation is."

President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to initiate a troop withdrawal
yesterday after signing the agreement on Saturday. On Sunday he told
France's president Nicholas Sarkozy a pullout was imminent.

Last night Russian officers insisted that the withdrawal was already
happening. In Moscow the deputy chief of staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn,
said: "According to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian
peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun." This included Gori, he
added.

Russian officials across the border in North Ossetia echoed this.
"War columns are already leaving. The main pullout will take place
today. It takes a long time to pack up a tank," a Russian spokesman
in the North Ossetia capital, Vladikavkaz, said. "We are talking days
not weeks."

Another Russian military spokesman, Lieutenant General Nikolay
Uvarov, told the BBC last night that Russian forces had left Gori,
which lies on the main east-west highway running through the heart of
the country. However, Russian troops were very much in evidence in
the town, and at checkpoints between Tbilisi and Gori, searching cars
and cutting the road between east and west Georgia. Nor was there a
sign of military movement from Gori north towards South Ossetia.

Georgian officials also claimed the Russians were busy laying mines.
Tkeshelashvili said that one of her principal appeals to Nato today
will be for help in demining.

Russia's most forward position last night was where it had been for
the past few days, at Igoeti, 27 miles from the capital. Russian
tanks were visible today in the surrounding wooded hills. An armoured
vehicle also ploughed into a line of stationary Georgian police cars.
"Russian forces are not leaving. They are merely rotating their
hardware. One comes, another one goes," said Irakly Porchkhidze, a
Georgian government official inside Gori, where humanitarian relief
was arriving today. He added: "There is no pullout."

There was growing concern that the Kremlin plans to exploit
ambiguities in the Sarkozy-drafted agreement to justify a semi-
permanent presence inside Georgia's borders. Moscow today indicated
it intended to deploy its forces under an internationally brokered
peace agreement in 1999, allowing Russia a generous "security zone".
The zone extends nine miles around Tskhinvali and allows a "corridor"
into Georgian areas. The document was designed to end the Georgian-
Ossetian conflict and agreed by a joint control commission, an
international body. The Georgian foreign minister, Tkeshelashvili,
said the 1999 deal only allowed Russia a maximum of 500 peacekeepers,
not to garrison towns or set up checkpoints.

Additionally, South Ossetian militias yesterday said they had no
intention of handing back territory. On Saturday the militias,
supported by Russian heavy armour, seized Akhalgori, 25 miles north-
west of Tbilisi. "This is now ours. It's Ossetian land," one militia
man said yesterday morning.

The town was under the control of South Ossetia's interior ministry
and police administration, he said. The Georgian flag had been
replaced by a white, red and yellow Ossetian one.
======================
EU OBSERVER 19.8.08
Germany calls for EU neighbours meeting on Georgia
HONOR MAHONY

Germany is calling for an EU neighbours meeting on Georgia to try and
bring stability to the volatile region, amid conflicting claims from
Moscow about whether it had promised to "pullback" or "withdraw" its
troops from the small South Caucasus country.

The conference - tentatively named "reconstruction and stability in
Georgia and the region" - would include many of the countries already
involved in the EU's neighbourhood policy, a mechanism aimed at
binding countries to the bloc through trade and economic ties.

German chancellor, Angela Merkel, mentioned deepening the EU's
contacts with these neighbouring countries following a meeting with
Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday (17 August).

"She particularly mentioned countries which haven't been directly
included in the [EU] neighbourhood policy so far," German government
spokesman, Thomas Steg, said, according to Reuters.

Berlin's aim is to extend the neighbourhood policy's coverage. At the
moment, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are involved in Brussels'
neighbourhood policy, but gas-rich Turkmenistan - mentioned
specifically by Ms Merkel on Sunday - is not. [nb. Bottom right hand
corner of the Caspian Sea; land borders with Iran, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, maritime border with Azerbaijan; no border
with Georgia. - thanks Denis Cooper!]

"We will suggest that the EU presidency arranges for a conference of
the EU and, within the framework of the neighbourhood policy, the
neighbouring states in the south Caucasus and the region," the
spokesman said, referring to the current French EU presidency.

Germany's proposal comes as the European Union attempts to work out
as a whole what its response to the Georgia-Russia war should be.

On Monday, French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that EU
governments were not ready to issue an ultimatum to Moscow, with
national capitals remaining divided about how strongly to chastise
Russia and how to apportion blame.

No ultimatums, yet
"We don't want to threaten," Mr Kouchner said at a news conference,
reports AFP. "We are serious. There is a red line. The red line is
the withdrawal of the troops. They must withdraw the troops."
"At a given moment, we will be faced with ultimatums," said Mr
Kouchner, but noted "We are not there at all."

Paris is deliberating whether to call a meeting of EU leaders,
something that is set to depend on the way and the speed with which
Russia removes its troops from Georgia.

But Moscow is already sending a muddy message on what it is doing
with its military.

On Monday, it said it had begun to withdraw troops. "Today, in line
with the plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers has begun,"
said the deputy head of Russia's general staff, general Anatoly
Nogovitsyn.

But he added that there had been a misunderstanding about Russian
president Dmitry Medvedev's promise to pull forces out of Georgia.
"There is a distinction between the understandings of a 'pullback'
and a 'withdrawal'... In the conversation with French president
Sarkozy, the discussion was about a pullback of forces, not a
withdrawal," he said, reports Sky News.

According to general Nogovitsyn, the troops would pull back to the
borders of South Ossetia, the breakaway region that sparked off the
conflict on 7 August. But he did not say how many troops would remain
in Georgia.

NATO debate
The EU's difficulty in finding a united line on Russia is likely to
be echoed in NATO on Tuesday with foreign ministers from the
organisation gathering in the Brussels headquarters to discuss the
crisis.

While eastern European states, the US and the UK are expected to push
a tougher line on Russia, western European countries such as Germany
and France [It’s always these two trying to dominate the other 25! -
cs] are expected to be reluctant to be too openly hard on Moscow.
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