Britannia Radio

An outright scandal !
This is an outright scandal ! The EU has shamed us all.

The EU is doing nothing till “next month” about Georgia. NEXT
MONTH ! That’s at least three weeks away. Wars don’t wait for
diplomats to come back from holidays! It’s an insult to those who
are - still - dying.

Some American past president famously said he wanted to know who to
ring up at the EU in a crisis . Ring up? He must have been joking.
Second-class post would show the right amount of urgency.

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EU OBSERVER 14.8.08
EU wants peacekeepers 'on the ground' in Georgia
PHILIPPA RUNNER

BRUSSELS - EU foreign ministers on Wednesday (13 August) agreed to
send peacekeepers to help supervise the fragile Russia-Georgia
ceasefire, putting off discussions on potential diplomatic sanctions
against Russia until next month.

"The European Union must be prepared to commit itself, including on
the ground," the EU joint statement said, asking EU top diplomat
Javier Solana to draft more detailed proposals for the ministers'
next meeting on 5 September.

"Many countries have said that they are ready to join in," French
foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said, adding that any EU move
would require a UN mandate. "We are encouraged by what we saw this
morning, but we have to go through the United Nations."

Ministers did not specify if the EU mission will compose EU-badge
wearing soldiers, policemen or civilian monitors. It also remains
unclear if it would be part of a wider force involving the UN and the
OSCE, or when deployment might start.
"You call it peacekeeping troops, I don't call it that...but
controllers, monitors, European facilitators, I think the Russians
would accept that," Mr Kouchner told reporters.

The Georgian government has called for an EU presence in its rebel-
held Abkhazia and South Ossetia provinces for at least three years,
but the EU has always maintained that Russia and the Russian-backed
separatists must agree first.

Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb voiced optimism that Russia
will now back the new initiative. "I'm convinced at the end of the
day we will find an international peacekeeping [force] in the region,
with the EU at its heart," he said, according to AFP.

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt told Reuters he was less sure.
"There are no signs of the Russians letting in anyone else...I don't
really see it happening - at the moment the Russians are firmly in
control."

The EU statement avoided any criticism of Moscow, despite widespread
feeling among EU members that Russia's massive assault on Georgia has
overshadowed Georgia's initial attack on the rebel town of
Tskhinvali. [which was in their own country! -cs]

On Wednesday night, Russian soldiers continued to attack abandoned
Georgian military facilities while Ossetian paramilitaries burned
ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia and looted the Georgian
town of Gori.
"I do not think we should get lost today in long discussions about
responsibility or who caused the escalation of the last few days,"
German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said. [Why on
earth not? Could it b e because the Russian gas pipeline ends in
Germany ? -cs]

Russia sanctions debate
A discussion on the potential suspension of talks on a new EU-Russia
strategic pact or other diplomatic sanctions against Russia has been
scheduled for the next EU foreign ministers meeting in September.

"We will speak very specifically about that," France's Mr Kouchner
said.
"The European Union will want to consider how it proceeds with the
Partnership and Cooperation Agreement," UK foreign minister, David
Miliband, said. "The sight of Russian tanks in Gori, Russian tanks in
Senaki, a Russian blockade of Poti, the Georgian port are a chilling
reminder of times that I think we had hoped had gone by."

The Polish and Lithuanian ministers echoed the British position.
"Of course some consequences must appear of the aggression,"
Lithuanian foreign minister, Petras Vaitiekunas, said. "There was
clearly disproportionate force used by the Russians," Poland's
Radoslaw Sikorski added.

In a separate event in Warsaw on Wednesday, the leaders of four
former-communist EU states went further by calling for NATO to put
Georgia firmly on the path to membership in order to "prevent similar
acts of agression and occupation" in future.

The presidents of Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and the prime minister
of Latvia also criticised the EU's endorsement of the six-point
Russia-Georgia peace plan, saying "the principal element - the
respect of teritorial integrity of Georgia - is missing."

The UK and eastern European states stand close to an increasingly
hostile US line on excluding Russia from "the international system"
and "international institutions" in punishment for the war.

'This is not 1968'
"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia
can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government,
and get away with it," US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said
on Wednesday, before flying to Paris and Tbilisi this week.

But Russia is blaming the US for training and arming Georgian forces
in a geopolitcal "project."
"It is clear that Georgia wants this dispute to become something more
than a short if bloody conflict in the region," Russian foreign
minister, Sergei Lavrov, said.

"For decision-makers in the NATO countries of the West, it would be
worth considering whether in future you want the men and women of
your armed services to be answerable to [Georgian president] Mr
Saakashvili's declarations of war."