GEORGIA: U.S. MILITARY INSTRUCTORS ARRIVE IN GEORGIA AS PART OF A U.S. PLAN TO TRAIN GEORGIAN FORCES IN ANTI-INSURGENCY OPERATIONS

Record ID: 584895

  • Title: GEORGIA: U.S. MILITARY INSTRUCTORS ARRIVE IN GEORGIA AS PART OF A U.S. PLAN TO TRAIN GEORGIAN FORCES IN ANTI-INSURGENCY OPERATIONS
  • Date: 19th May 2002
  • Summary: (W5) TBILISI, GEORGIA (MAY 19, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV/SCU: C-17 PLANE TAXIING AT TARMAC (2 SHOTS) 0.16 2. WS/SLV: U.S INSTRUCTORS IN MILITARY UNIFORM LEAVING PLANE (2 SHOTS) 0.36 3. CU: SIGN ON PLANE "U.S AIR FORCE" 0.40 4. SLV: INSTRUCTORS LEAVING PLANE 0.51 5. MV: INSTRUCTORS GETTING INTO VANS 0.59 6. SV: INSTRUCTORS WALKING THROUGH AIR-FIELD 1.05 7. SV: SOLDIER 1.09 8. SCU: (SOUNDBITE)(English) LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBERT WALTEMEYER SAYING: "It looked pretty good, didn't it. We had a lot of support here from Georgia, all the agencies involved. Everybody worked hard to put that together. That went like clock work and I'm very proud." 1.20 9. SCU: MEDIA 1.24 10. WS/LV: VANS DRIVING AWAY (2 SHOTS) 1.40 (W5) TBILISI, GEORGIA (RECENT - MAY 17, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 11. LV: DEFENCE MINISTRY BUILDING 1.45 12. SCU: (SOUNDBITE)(Georgian) DAVID TEVZADZE, GEORGIAN DEFENCE MINISTER SAYING: "This programme is not one sided, it's a bilateral agreement and everything was done for this programme to be effective. The memorandum that we signed stated clear obligations of the Georgian government and I have no reason to believe at this point that the Georgian side would not abide by them." 2.16 13. SV: SENIOR CONSULTANT TO THE U.S. DEFENCE DEPARTMENT AND TO GEORGIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY OTAR SHALIKASHVILI, U.S AMBASSADOR RICHARD MILES AND OTHER OFFICIALS MEETING PRESIDENT EDUARD SHEVARDNADZE 2.21 14. SCU: (SOUNDBITE) (English) OTAR SHALIKASHVILI, SENIOR CONSULTANT OF THE DEFENCE DEPARTMENT OF USA AND GEORGIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYING: "I do not want to overstate it, but we do count on Georgian side to meet the agreements that we have reached, because if the agreements are not reached it does not make 100 per cent sense to have the programme." 2.37 15. SV/SLV: TALKS IN PROGRESS (2 SHOTS) 2.50 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 3rd June 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TBILISI, GEORGIA
  • Country: Georgia
  • Reuters ID: LVA82RH2DQZSJBSG9BG8H0MR1X3O
  • Story Text: U.S. military instructors have arrived in the former
    Soviet republic of Georgia as part of a U.S. plan to train
    Georgian forces in anti-insurgency operations.


    The long-awaited team of U.S. military instructors
    arrived in former Soviet Georgia on Sunday (May 19) to begin
    the latest mission in the U.S.-led campaign against Muslim
    radicals.

    The instructors will train Georgia's sometimes mutinous
    army to help them fight rebels holed-up in a remote mountain
    gorge.

    About 50 Green Beret instructors and support personnel
    landed at an airport near the capital Tbilisi at about 3 p.m.

    (1000 GMT) after flying in from Fort Carson, Colorado, by way
    of Germany.

    Lieutenant Colonel Robert Waltemeyer said, "It looked
    pretty good, didn't it. We had a lot of support here from
    Georgia, all the agencies involved. Everybody worked hard to
    put that together. That went like clock work and I'm very
    proud."
    The troops' arrival will add to the growing U.S. military
    presence in parts of the old Soviet Union since the September
    11 attacks on the United States that prompted President George
    W. Bush to declare a "war on terrorism".

    "This programme is not one sided, it's a bilateral
    agreement and everything was done for this programme to be
    effective. The memorandum that we signed stated clear
    obligations of the Georgian government and I have no reason to
    believe at this point that the Georgian side would not abide
    by them," Georgian Defence minister David Tavzadze told
    Reuters.

    The Bush administration, under pressure amid recent
    reports that the president had been told before September of
    the possibility of a hijacking by followers of Osama bin
    Laden, wants Georgia to have an efficient army to combat the
    rebels.

    They are believed to use the Pankisi Gorge, in northern
    Georgia, to regroup and rest between raids across the frontier
    on Russia's rebel Chechnya region.

    But the deployment of U.S. troops in Georgia has angered
    Russia, which considers the area its own backyard and had
    asked for its own forces to be invited to tackle the rebels.

    Georgia, a traditionally Christian nation that has long
    yearned for closer ties to the West, considers the arrival of
    the Americans a sign that it is free from Moscow's control.

    The mission is likely to be discussed when Bush meets
    Russian President Vladimir Putin for a two-day summit in
    Moscow and St Petersburg on May 24.

    The arrival of U.S. troops has also spurred open hostility
    in Georgia's rebel Abkhazia region. It fears Georgian
    President Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign
    minister, will eventually send his newly trained force to
    recapture the unruly territory after 10 years of de facto
    independence.

    Georgia says about 2,000 soldiers and officers, the
    equivalent of about four battalions of infantry and border
    guards, will go through the $64 million training programme,
    which is to last almost six months.

    The soldiers will learn military strategy in classrooms
    before going into the field for practical lessons on tactics.

    More than 100 instructors will visit Tbilisi during the
    programme.


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