GEORGIA / RUSSIA: Western powers appeal to Russia for an immediate ceasefire in the Caucasus

Record ID: 376377

  • Title: GEORGIA / RUSSIA: Western powers appeal to Russia for an immediate ceasefire in the Caucasus
  • Date: 12th August 2008
  • Summary: (W3) TSKHINVALI, SOUTH OSSETIA, GEORGIA (AUGUST 11, 2008) (REUTERS) MEN DIGGING GRAVE MAN SITTING NEAR GRAVE WITH HEAD IN HIS HANDS MEN DIGGING IN CEMETERY
  • Embargoed: 27th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: War / Fighting
  • Reuters ID: LVA5I0A3PB1PZM18C70X3YNHX4YT
  • Story Text: Western powers appealed to Russia on Monday (August 11) for an immediate ceasefire in the Caucasus after Moscow pushed troops further into Georgia and Tbilisi shelled the Russian-held region of South Ossetia.
    The U.S. State Department said foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrial nations supported international mediation to end a crisis that risks engulfing the Caucasus, an important energy export route, in war.
    They urged Russia to respect the territorial integrity of its former Soviet vassal. Moscow was in no mood to compromise.
    Russian defence ministry officials said Georgia was heavily shelling South Ossetia -- the province at the centre of the conflict -- despite announcing a ceasefire. A Reuters witness saw Georgian helicopter gunships bombing targets in the area, sending dark smoke billowing into the air.
    Escalating the conflict, Russian troops and armoured vehicles moved out of Abkhazia, a second breakaway territory to the west of Ossetia, into Georgia proper.
    The Russian Defence Ministry justified the operation in the town of Senaki, which lies outside a security zone along the de facto Abkhaz boundary, because of a need to avert fresh Georgian attacks.
    The development will deepen Western concern of a second front in Russia's conflict with Georgia, after days of intense fighting between the two countries for control of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.
    Earlier on Monday, President Mikheil Saakashvili met with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and urged his Western allies to provide more than just moral support and aid to confront Russia in Georgia's conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia.

    "We are in the process of the invasion, occupation and annihilation of an independent, democratic country. We are in the process of the destruction of the world order as it was established after the end of the Cold War. And it is so obvious that what the world has to react. There is no way the Georgian people would live with occupation and annexation," he told reporters at a news conference after his meeting.
    French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to embark on a peace mission to Moscow on Tuesday (August 12) and meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
    Relations between Russia and its small, former Soviet neighbour have deteriorated in part because of Georgia's ambition to join NATO and bring the western alliance to Russia's southern border.
    Russia and Georgia engaged in a bitter war of words on Monday about their conflict, trading numerous claims and counter-claims.
    Saakashvili told reporters that Russia wants to replace the government in Tbilisi and claimed Moscow wanted to seize control of energy routes in the region.
    Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has taken a leading role in the crisis, attacked the United States for helping Georgia fly home troops from Iraq and said the West was mistaking the aggressors for victims in the conflict -- a reference to strong Western support for Georgia and criticism of Moscow.

    "The cold war has been over for a long time, but this cold war mentality dominates the thinking of some American diplomats. It is a pity, but we continue building up relations with all partners, and of course, our American partners," said Putin.
    But the U.S. countered that Russia had already prepared in advance for an invasion of Georgia.
    U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza said after flying into Tbilisi on Monday (August 11) that the recent build-up of Russian troops in Abkhazia was allegedly for humanitarian reasons, but was really just a ploy for Moscow's real intentions.

    "We heard statements saying that the Russian railroad troops that entered Abkhazia a couple of months ago were there for a humanitarian mission," Bryza told journalists at the airport in Tbilisi.

    "Now we know the truth that these forces were there to rebuild the railway to allow ammunition and other military supplies to aid a Russian invasion."
    The simmering conflict erupted last Thursday (August 7) when Georgia suddenly sent forces to retake South Ossetia, which cast off Georgian rule in the 1990s.
    Moscow responded with a counter-attack by its vastly bigger forces that drove Georgian troops out of the devastated South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali on Sunday. Russia says 1,600 people have been killed in the fighting and thousands more are homeless but these figures are not independently verifiable.
    Women and children wept in the streets of Tskhinvali on Monday as they surveyed the destruction amid continued Georgian shelling. Russian troops distributed water and food from trucks.
    One elderly resident told Reuters how she sheltered in a cellar during the bombardment.

    "APC's and tanks were here, were right here, and they [Georgian soldiers] were saying "Shoot at those windows," she said.
    Russia said at a daily military briefing that it had lost four military aircraft and 18 soldiers since the fighting started, with another 14 missing in action and 52 wounded.
    But Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn rejected Georgian claims that up to 50 Russian jets had bombed Georgia overnight.
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