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Russia-Georgia War Intensifies
Civilian Deaths on Increase In Conflict Over S. Ossetia

Bush: U.S. Urges Immediate Standown in Georgia
President Bush took a break from his visit to the Olympics to call for an immediate halt to the violence and a stand down of Russian troops in Georgia.

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 10, 2008;

GORI, Georgia, Aug. 9 -- Russian strategic bombers and jet fighter planes pounded targets in many parts of Georgia on Saturday, hitting apartment buildings and economic installations, as well as military targets in an escalating war that is killing more and more civilians and confounding international efforts to secure a cease-fire.

Russia continued to pour troops and tanks into South Ossetia, the breakaway region of Georgia that triggered the conflict, to confront Georgian forces that are attempting to reclaim the region. Both sides claimed control of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, where sporadic gunfire and shelling continued Saturday.

"Nobody really controls anything," said a senior U.S. official, noting the continuing fighting.

Civilians on both sides of the conflict fled homes, sometimes leaving behind devastation and bodies buried in rubble. Russia said that 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia and that more than 30,000 refugees had crossed into Russia.

Georgian officials said 130 people were killed on its side of the unofficial border with South Ossetia, including at least 30 civilians who died Saturday when bombs from Russian planes struck two apartment buildings in this city.

None of the casualty figures could be independently confirmed.

Rhetoric on both sides escalated Saturday, with each side saying it wants peace and a cease-fire but with neither showing signs of backing down. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Georgia of "genocide." Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, speaking to a small group of foreign reporters, vowed that Georgia will "resist until the end."



The Russians "want to get rid of us," he said. "They want to make regime change. And they want to get rid of any democratic movement in this part of their neighborhood. That's it, period."

President Bush and other Western leaders repeated calls for a cease-fire, their comments increasingly leavened with criticism of Russia's intensifying operation. Georgian hopes of pledges of help were disappointed.

"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia," said Bush, who was in Beijing for the opening of the Olympics but spoke to Saakashvili by phone Saturday afternoon. "They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis."

Alexander Stubb, the Finnish foreign minister and chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, noted that Russia, which has had peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia for years, could no longer be considered a mediator. "Russia is at the moment a party in this conflict," Stubb said. Speaking in Helsinki on Saturday, he expressed little hope for a quick solution. Asked about the chances of a cease-fire and negotiations, he said: "On a scale of 1 to 10, we are at about 2."

The French government, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, urged Russia to accept a Georgian call for a cease-fire. The French presidency "underlines that the pursuit of military action would affect its relationship with Russia," a statement said. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner is due to visit the region Sunday.

The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, failed for the second day in a row to agree on a common response to the crisis.

Russia's U.N. envoy, Vitaly I. Churkin, said the fighting would not stop until Georgia withdrew its forces from South Ossetia and signed an agreement pledging not to use force in the province again. The United States countered that Russia's military intervention into Georgian territory was threatening to destabilize the region. The United States urged all parties to agree to a cease-fire. "The first thing that has to happen is that the violence has to stop and Russian forces have to be withdrawn," said Alejandro D. Wolff, the U.S. deputy permanent representative.

Despite those efforts, combat continued for a second day Saturday and appeared to widen to other fronts. Separatists in Abkhazia, another section of Georgia seeking independence or integration into Russia, began shelling Georgian positions in the upper Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia controlled by the government in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital.

The United Nations announced it will withdraw about 15 military observers from Abkhazia, citing fear that the U.N. blue helmets could get caught in crossfire between Russian-backed Abkhaz forces and Georgian troops.

Saakashvili said in the interview that Russia was staging seaborne forces in the Black Sea near Abkhazia and planned to land troops and launch attacks on Georgian forces in the upper Kodori Gorge.

A senior U.S. official said that the Bush administration had received confirmation that Russia was moving elements of its Black Sea fleet to the area, which he described as another example of a disproportionate response by Russia.



"Why that's a legitimate use of military assets is beyond me," the official said.

Saakashvili said Russian planes struck the Black Sea port of Poti, attempted to hit but missed a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to Turkey, and bombed railway stations, among other nonmilitary targets. Doctors working in Gori said that Russian planes had struck two military field hospitals.

Saakashvili said Georgia had shot down 10 Russian SU-27 fighter jets (Russia has confirmed losing two). He accused Russia of attempting to sow panic among the population by targeting apartment buildings in Gori and homes in nearby villages.

"Russia is behaving like a rogue state," he said.

"This is unprecedented," said Georgian political analyst Giorgi Margvelashvili. "Not since the destruction of the Soviet Union have they done things like that."

Georgia has mobilized its reserves and is calling home 2,000 troops serving in Iraq for the fight against Russia.
"There is panic in Tbilisi," said a senior U.S. official, briefing reporters in Washington. He said Russia is using TU-22 supersonic strategic bombers that can carry as much as 54,000 pounds of bombs and cruise missiles. He also said that Russia has launched ballistic missiles against targets in Georgia.

Russian officials were adamant Saturday that they were striking only targets associated with what they described as Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia, an area patrolled since the early 1990s by Russian peacekeepers.

Putin, returning from the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing, flew to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia in Russia, where most of the South Ossetian refugees from the fighting have fled.

"Russia's actions in South Ossetia are totally legitimate," Putin said.

"We urge the Georgian authorities to immediately stop their aggression against South Ossetia, to stop all violations of all standing agreements on a cease-fire and to respect the legal rights and interests of other people." The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of encouraging Georgia to carry out "ethnic cleansing" in South Ossetia.

The desire of the leadership in both Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO has infuriated the Kremlin, which regards any further expansion of the Western military alliance as a threat to its security.

"Georgia's aspiration to join NATO . . . is driven by its attempt to drag other nations and peoples into its bloody adventures," Putin said in Vladikavkaz.



Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Bush in a telephone call that there would be no talks with Tbilisi until Georgian troops withdraw from the conflict zone.

Ossetians are an ethnic group separate from the country's dominant Georgians. Both are Christian, but each has its own language, culture and sense of history.

South Ossetia waged a war in the early 1990s to secure quasi-independence from Georgia. South Ossetian and Georgian forces have since regularly skirmished along an unofficial border. On Thursday, there were artillery exchanges.

The parties disagree over who began the escalation. Saakashvili said he ordered his forces in only after Russian troops crossed into South Ossetia in large numbers.

But Russia says that Georgia escalated the standoff by crossing the unrecognized frontier in an effort to regain control of the disputed territory. Russian officials said that a blistering assault on Tskhinvali devastated the city, killed hundreds of civilians and more than 10 Russian peacekeepers, and sparked the Russian response.

"Whatever part of Georgia is used for this aggression is not safe," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Staff writers Karen DeYoung in Washington, Tara Bahrampour in Tbilisi and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

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Russia border clash grows
Cease-fire call ignored; troops pour into region
BY MEGAN K. STACK AND PETER SPIEGEL
Los Angeles Times

    MOSCOW — Russia plowed closer to all-out war with Georgia on Saturday, sending warplanes to bomb deep inside the neighboring country and preparing to move more troops into the fray over a pro-Moscow separatist republic.
    Moscow brushed aside calls from the Georgian government for a cease-fire, insisting that the troops’ mission was to restore calm to the breakaway republic, called South Ossetia.
    “We are enforcing peace,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who reported that the death toll was at 1,500 and climbing. That figure could not be confirmed.
    Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, meanwhile, declared a state of war, and Georgia’s parliament voted to impose martial law.
    “We, on our own, cannot fight with Russia,” Saakashvili told the BBC. “We want immediate cease-fi re ... and international mediation.”
    Lavrov called the truce appeal a “cynical” move, given that the fighting began when Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on South Ossetia late last week.
MUCH AT STAKE
    The fighting threatens to inflame the volatile Caucasus region, which has emerged as a strategically crucial proving ground for Russia and the United States to vie for influence among former Soviet states. Tensions between Moscow and the West have sharpened in recent years, with an increasingly wealthy Russia striving to restore the superpower status it lost with the Soviet collapse.
    As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rushed home from the Beijing Olympics on Saturday, President Bush called on Moscow to respect Georgia’s sovereign territory.
    “Georgia is a sovereign nation, and its territorial integrity must be respected,” Bush said, in the latest sign that his administration is lining up behind Saakashvili’s pro-Western government in the worsening conflict. “We call for an end to the Russian bombings.
    “I’m deeply concerned,” Bush said. “The United States takes this matter very seriously.”
    Bush was careful to urge both sides to stand down. But his remarks clearly placed the onus for the growing violence on the Kremlin, saying that bombings inside Georgia were occurring “far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia” and calling on Russia to cease such attacks.
    A senior U.S. official, speaking to reporters on the traditional diplomatic condition of anonymity, was even more blunt, saying that Russia was attacking Georgia with large strategic bombers and firing ballistic missiles into Georgian territory.
    “I, for the life of me, can’t imagine how that could be a proportional response to allegations that Georgians had fired upon Russian peacekeepers,” the official said.
    The official said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been in contact with her European counterparts Saturday and was contemplating sending an envoy to the region to help broker a cease-fire.
    But the official said the United State was not currently considering any military aid to the Georgians. The United States has dispatched military trainers to Georgia to help modernize the Georgian armed forces, and just under 150 are believed to be in Georgian territory.
    In Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian republic backed by Russia, fighters launched attacks on Georgian military positions. Like South Ossetia, Abkhazia won de facto autonomy in a bloody war with Georgia and is now leaning on Russia in the hopes of winning independence. The outbreak of fi ghting in Abkhazia raised the threat of a broader war in the Caucasus.
DRUMBEAT GROWING?
    In another move that a bigger, bloodier fight could be in store, Russia moved its Black Sea fleet closer to the Georgian coast Saturday, the Interfax news agency reported. Georgia has already called for a mass mobilization of all reservists and called its 2,000 troops home from Iraq to join the fight.
    After returning from Beijing, Putin installed himself in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, just over the border from South Ossetia. Once back on Russian turf, Putin was plainly at the helm of war planning — consulting with the military, denouncing Georgia and meeting with South Ossetian refugees.
    The prime minister accused Georgia of “genocide” of South Ossetians and pledged Russian funds to rebuild the capital of the breakaway republic. He also hinted that Georgia no longer had the moral authority to assert territorial control over the rebel republic.
    Ethnic tensions have brewed between Georgians and South Ossetians for generations. Critics say Moscow has stoked that animosity, especially in recent months, by supporting South Ossetia’s separatist fever and doling out Russian passports to residents of the breakaway republic.
    Each side is struggling to frame the other’s involvement as an invasion; each is striving to portray the other as the aggressor.
    “The reason we’re going to the region in such a rush is that we’re trying to figure out what’s going on down there,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch in Moscow. “If you compare the Russian side with the Georgian side, it appears right away that something is really very wrong with the information we are receiving.”
    The fighting erupted in earnest early Friday, when the Georgian military opened a surprise assault on South Ossetia, apparently in the hopes of startling the republic, quickly seizing control and bringing the rebel region back under the control of Georgia.
    Russia, which has long maintained troops in both of Georgia’s breakaway republics, responded by sending its own soldiers pouring over the border into South Ossetia. The fighting quickly seemed to be focused between Georgia and Russia. Russian warplanes pounded Georgian military and industrial targets. Georgia shot down at least two Russian planes and attacked bases.
FAR-REACHING
IMPLICATIONS
    Bitterly blaming Georgian President Saakashvili for the bloodshed, Russia’s Lavrov also griped about countries that have backed Georgia — a thinly veiled swipe at the United States.
    “Those who have been supplying arms to Georgia, I believe they should feel part of the blame for the loss of life of civilians, including many Russian citizens and peacekeepers,” he said. “I think those who have been appeasing Mr. Saakashvili’s aggressive intentions and who helped create a feeling of impunity among the Georgian leadership should think twice.”
    The fighting comes against a backdrop of an increasingly acrimonious struggle between Washington and the Kremlin over the future of nations that were once part of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
    For much of the last two years, the Bush administration and Putin’s government have been engaged in an escalating war of words over U.S. plans to base a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russian officers have warned that Moscow would aim rockets at Polish territory if the United States proceeded with plans to construct interceptor missile sites there.
    In addition, the Kremlin has used its control of vast oil and gas reserves to put pressure on neighboring Ukraine, which like Georgia has sought to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moscow has occasionally shut off pipelines supplying Ukraine in what the pro-Western government of President Victor Yushenko has viewed as an attempt to bring Kiev back into Moscow’s fold.

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Saakashvili said Russian planes struck the Black Sea port of Poti, attempted to hit but missed a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil to Turkey,

Quoted from Kevin March

Wars and rumors of wars...

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Georgian army flees in disarray as Russians advance

The Georgian Army was in complete disarray last night after troops and tanks fled the town of Gori in panic and abandoned it to the Russians without firing a shot.

As Russian armoured columns rolled deep into central and western Georgia, seizing several towns and a military base, President Saakashvili said that his country had been cut in half.

For the first time since the crisis erupted last Thursday, Russia admitted that its troops had moved out of Abkhazia, the other breakaway region under Moscow’s protection, and seized the town of Senaki in Georgia proper. Russian officials again insisted that they had no intention of occupying territory beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Georgia said that the Russian Army was also in command of the towns of Zugdidi and Kurga in the west, and its tanks appeared to be moving from the north and the west towards Tbilisi, the capital.

The retreat from Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, was as humiliating as it was sudden and dramatic. The Times witnessed scores of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, laden with soldiers, speeding through the town away from what Georgian officials claimed was an imminent Russian invasion.

Residents watched in horror as their army abandoned its positions after a day of increasingly aggressive exchanges of fire along the border with South Ossetia, the breakaway region now fully under Russian control.

Jeeps and pick-up trucks filled with Georgian soldiers raced through the streets, their occupants frantically signalling to civilians that they too should flee. The road out of Gori towards Tbilisi was a scene of chaos and fear as cars jockeyed with tanks for a speedy escape.

Soldiers left by any means available. Dozens of troops clung to cars on the back of a transporter lorry, while five other soldiers fled on one quad bike.

A tank had exploded on the mountain road leaving Gori, although it was unclear what had caused the blast. The Times passed an armoured car in flames, soldiers leaping from the roof of the vehicle. It had apparently caught fire while trying to bulldoze the tank’s burning shell out of the way. Columns of Georgian tanks and heavy weaponry filled the road during the 50-mile journey back to Tbilisi as thousands of soldiers, many looking totally demoralised, headed for the capital. Police sealed off the highway from Tbilisi, turning back the few cars that ventured towards Gori.

The Russian attacks were met with Georgian artillery fire towards South Ossetia, despite President Saakashvili’s statement that he had called a ceasefire. Reporters later witnessed at least six Georgian helicopters attacking targets in South Ossetia.

Elsewhere, Russian armoured personnel carriers swept into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti, which Russian troops were also said to be attacking.

Georgia said that Russian forces seized police stations in Zugdidi, where reporters saw Russian soldiers posted outside an Interior Ministry building and armoured vehicles moving through the town.

It was unclear last night where the tanks fleeing from Gori were heading, but many of the troops regrouped on the outskirts of Tbilisi as if preparing to make a stand to defend the capital. Some artillery pieces had also been sited on the approach road from Gori.

The panic had been triggered at about 5pm, when troops suddenly started pouring out of Gori. Officials from the Georgian Interior Ministry claimed that up to 7,000 Russian troops with tanks were heading for the town and that it was under imminent threat of bombardment. A similar panic had ensued on Sunday night as thousands of people poured from the town, in what turned out to be a false alarm. The fear this time was more tangible, the sense of threat more real, as Gori’s streets emptied rapidly.

Not everyone was prepared to leave, however. One man said: “This is my city. I will never leave it even if the Russians come here and kill me. Why should I go to Tbilisi and wait for them there?”

The Georgian Government, which appealed for international support, claimed later that Russian troops had entered Gori, although there was no independent confirmation of this.

As the noose appeared to tighten around Tbilisi, the US State Department evacuated more than 170 American citizens. Poland and several other former Soviet satellites voiced fears that the fighting indicated Russia’s willingness to use force to regain its dominance of the region.

Even at the height of the chaos, Georgia’s legendary hospitality never faltered. A 70-year-old woman named Eteri retreated into her home and appeared moments later to offer apples from her garden to her guests. “I am not afraid,” she said. “We have lived with the Russians for 100 years so why do we need this war now? I don’t want to be with America; I think we should live peacefully with the Russians.”

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Obama talks to Rice about Georgia, condemns Russia

Politico Staff
Sat Aug 9, 10:19 PM ET

Barack Obama broke from his Hawaiian vacation to discuss the clashes between Georgia and Russia with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Georgian president, his campaign reported.

Afterward, he issued a statement saying: "I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire."

Here is the campaign's Saturday night statement:

"Below is a statement from Sen. Barack Obama on Russia’s escalation of violence against Georgia:

“I just spoke separately with Secretary Rice and President Saakashvili about the grave crisis in Georgia. I told President Saakashvili that I was deeply concerned about the wellbeing of the people of Georgia.

“Over the last two days, Russia has escalated the crisis in Georgia through its clear and continued violation of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Friday, Aug. 8, Russian military forces invaded Georgia. I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate ceasefire. Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace, and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia. Both sides should allow humanitarian assistance to reach civilians in need. Russia also must end its cyber war against Georgian government websites. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.

“As I have said for many months, aggressive diplomatic action must be taken to reach a political resolution to this crisis, and to assure that Georgia’s sovereignty is protected. Diplomats at the highest levels from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations must become directly involved in mediating this military conflict and beginning a process to resolve the political disputes over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A genuinely neutral mediator — not the Russian government — must begin a process of negotiations immediately.

“The situation in Georgia also requires the deployment of genuine international peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The current escalation of military conflict resulted in part from the lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate UN mandate. Russia cannot play a constructive role as peacekeeper. Instead, Russian actions in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia appear to be intended to preserve an unstable status quo.”

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While U.S. media obsesses about John Edwards’ extramarital
shenanigans

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, August 8, 2008

Georgian forces, trained and equipped by the Pentagon and the U.S. government, killed 10 Russian peacekeepers early this morning in a provocation attack that has escalated into military conflict, but the subsequent corporate media coverage would have us believe that the U.S. and NATO-backed client state Georgia is a helpless victim, when in actual fact a far more nuanced geopolitical strategy is being played out.

Original reports early this morning detailed how Georgian forces had killed 10 Russian peacekeepers and wounded 30 others, which was the provocation for Russian forces to begin military operations, but the fact that Georgian forces were responsible for starting the conflagration has been completely buried in subsequent media coverage.

“Georgia and the Pentagon cooperate closely,” reports MSNBC, “Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to the Georgian military.”

The latest exercise, Immediate Response 2008, which took place last month, involved no less than one thousand U.S. troops working with Georgian troops in a war game scenario.

Moreover, the very “Rose Revolution” that brought the Harvard trained pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvilli to power in 2003 was wholly aided and abetted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Russian fury at U.S. support for Georgia and Georgia’s aspirations of becoming a NATO member have flared regularly in recent months, with tensions also rising following U.S. attempts to place missile defense shield technology in Poland and the Czech Republic, which most observers agree has nothing to do with Iran and is in fact aimed at countering Russian military superiority in the region.

In addition, the pro-Israeli news source DebkaFile reports that Georgian infantry units were “aided by Israeli military advisors” in capturing the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali earlier today.

DebkaFile elaborates on the true geopolitical significance behind today’s events.

DEBKAfile’s geopolitical experts note that on the surface level, the Russians are backing the separatists of S. Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as payback for the strengthening of American influence in tiny Georgia and its 4.5 million inhabitants. However, more immediately, the conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region.

The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines.

Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.

Former Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, told The Alex Jones Show today that the entire scenario smacked of a maneuver on behalf of the Neo-Con faction controlling the White House, led by private Cheney. Roberts said the date was precisely picked due to the distraction of the Olympics and Bush being out of the country.

Both Condoleezza Rice and John McCain have today demanded Russia withdraw its forces from Georgia immediately.

Meanwhile, the U.S. media networks are seemingly more interested in the complete non-story of John Edwards having an affair, while a conflict that could have devastating and thunderous geopolitical consequences fizzes on the verge of explosion.

As of early Friday evening, Edwards’ extramarital shenanigans were dominating CNN and Fox News, while Drudge also afforded the story more prominence that the situation in Georgia, which was also deemed less important than the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
.

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Aug 11, 2008 8:16 | Updated Aug 12, 2008 6:09
Georgian official to 'Post': Russia moving in on capital
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, AND AP


Russian forces are moving in on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and the Georgian military has received orders to gather en masse around the  capital and hold off the attack for as long as possible, Georgia's chargés d'affaires, Vladimir Konstantinidi, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday night.

"The Russians took control of [the strategic city of] Gori, which is west of the  capital, Tbilisi. It's the same distance as from Haifa to Tel Aviv," Konstantinidi said.
"They've started moving towards the  capital because that is their main target. So our forces are concentrating around a town [between Gori and Tbilisi]. They have to try and hold the Russians off for at least a while," he added.
Asked if he believed this to be a realistic goal, Konstantinidi said, "I don't think anything. I hope that we will succeed."


He said it was becoming apparent that the entire conflict had been "planned by Russia a long time ago."
"Now we can see that this was not a response to defend the separatist region of South Ossetia. This was actually a plan of aggression which has been prepared for years and over the last few months especially. It began with a provocation and is continuing into this war," he said.


"We're waiting for more action from our friends all over the world."
Some foreign ministers and officials are attempting to plan visits to Georgia in order to raise support for the independent country but Constantinidi said, "we are waiting for more assertive actions from the international community."
Despite continued calls for calm from the United States and other Western powers, Russia rejected a cease-fire with Georgia Monday after reportedly capturing Gori.
Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili told a national security meeting on Monday night that Russian troops had effectively sliced his country in half.
"[Russian forces] came to the central route and cut off connections between western and eastern Georgia," he said.
Russia denied seizing Gori and effectively cutting the country in half (since the city straddles Georgia's only significant east-west highway) according to the Russian news agency Interfax. But the ongoing hostilities threatened to widen the conflict, which Georgian leaders warn augers a Russian attempt to take over the country, even as Western powers are urging international mediation and respect for Georgia's territorial integrity.
Fighting also raged Monday around Tskhinvali, the  capital of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Swarms of Russian warplanes also launched new air raids across Georgia, with at least one sending screaming civilians running for cover.
The two-front battlefield was a major escalation in the conflict that blew up late Thursday after a Georgian offensive to regain control of the separatist province of South Ossetia. Even as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday with EU mediators, Russia flexed its military muscle and appeared determined to subdue the small US ally which has been pressing for NATO membership. On Monday afternoon, Russian troops invaded Georgia from the western separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces were busy with fighting in the central region around South Ossetia.
The conflict is severely straining relations between Russia and the West, as Washington and Moscow have traded barbs while the situation on the ground intensifies.
At Georgia's request, the UN Security Council called an emergency session for later Monday - the fifth meeting on the fighting in as many days.
Meanwhile, the US helped the 2,000 or so Georgian forces deployed in Iraq to return home, eliciting an angry reaction for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said the move wouldn't help resolve the situation.
"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shi'ite villages," Putin said in Moscow. "And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed ten Ossetian villages at once, who ran [over] elderly people and children with tanks, who burned civilians alive in their sheds - these leaders must be taken under protection."
The US has criticized such rhetoric from Putin for inflaming and feeding the conflict. The administration has also condemned the type and breadth of force employed by the Kremlin - including ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and raids into areas the US says are far from the provinces in contention.
"I've expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia, and that we strongly condemn the bombing outside of South Ossetia," Bush told NBC Sports in an interview Sunday.
Still, the US is continuing to emphasize diplomatic engagement, with a State Department official saying Monday that, "The United States is responding to Georgia's humanitarian and reconstruction needs and is prepared to provide assistance as needed."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her counterparts in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations spoke by telephone Monday and affirmed their support for a diplomatic solution, urging Russia to agree to international mediation and respect Georgian territorial integrity and condemning the loss of civilian life.
But Russba expert Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, assessed that Western diplomatic engagement will yield little.
"Russia is beyond the point of no return. The US and European diplomatic entreaties failed. Russian delivered a slap in the face to [EU President] Nicolas Sarkozy and President Bush. Now it has created a new geopolitical reality between the Black Sea and the Caspian," he said. "It will be extremely difficult to dislodge" Russia.
He said the Kremlin's aim is to establish control of the oil and gas resources in the region and that it would not be responsive to diplomatic pressure, while the US and other Western powers had not indicated a willingness to use military force to oppose Putin.
Georgians have expressed criticism of the US and its Western allies for not doing more to help, given Georgia's strategic decision to ally itself with the West and seek membership in NATO in the face of Russian displeasure.

But US senior officials indicated that the US had cautioned  Georgia against provoking armed conflict with Russia, despite the long-simmering territorial dispute and what it sees as Russian violations.

"President Saakashvili miscalculated and walked into a trap that the Russian president set for him," Cohen assessed. "We [the US] were warning Georgia that we did not want a military confrontation between  Georgia and  Russia. Now we can see why."
Georgia borders the Black Sea between Turkey and  Russia and was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Both the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since fighting to split from  Georgia in the early 1990s - and both have close ties with Moscow.
Georgia began an offensive to regain control over South Ossetia late Thursday with heavy shelling and air strikes that ravaged South Osseita's provincial capital of Tskhinvali.
The  Russia response was swift and overpowering - thousands of troops that shelled the Georgians until they fled Tskhinvali on Sunday, and four days of bombing raids across  Georgia.
Yet Georgia's pledge of a cease-fire rang hollow Monday. An AP reporter saw a small group of Georgian fighters open fire on a column of Russian and Ossetian military vehicles outside Tskhinvali, triggering a 30-minute battle. The Russians later said all the Georgians were killed.

Another AP reporter was in the village of Tkviavi, 12 kilometers south of Tskhinvali inside  Georgia, when a bomb from a Russian Sukhoi warplane struck a house. The walls of neighboring buildings fell as screaming residents ran for cover. Eighteen people were wounded, six of them seriously.
Georgian artillery fire was heard coming from fields about 200 meters away from the village, perhaps the bomber's target.
Hundreds of Georgian troops headed north Monday along the road toward Tskhinvali, pocked with tank regiments creeping up the highway into South Ossetia. Hundreds of other soldiers traveled via trucks in the opposite direction, towing light artillery weapons.
Saakashvili signed a cease-fire pledge Monday proposed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb. The EU envoys headed to Moscow to try to persuade  Russia to accept the cease-fire.
Saakashvili, however, voiced concern that Russia's true goal was to undermine his pro-Western government. "It's all about the independence and democracy of  Georgia," he said.
Saakashvili said  Russia had sent 20,000 troops and 500 tanks into  Georgia. He said Russian warplanes were bombing roads and bridges, destroying radar systems and targeting Tbilisi's civilian airport. One Russian bombing raid struck the Tbilisi airport area only a half hour before the EU envoys arrived, he said.
Another hit near key Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which carries Caspian crude to the West. No supply interruptions have been reported.
Abkhazia's separatists declared Sunday they would push Georgian forces out of the northern part of the Kodori Gorge, the only area of Abkhazia still under Georgian control.
Before invading western  Georgia, Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn demanded Monday that  Georgia disarm its police in Zugdidi, a town just outside Abkhazia. Still, he insisted, "we are not planning any offensive." At least 9,000 Russian troops and 350 armored vehicles were in Abkhazia, according to a Russian military commander.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said more than 2,000 people had been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, most of them Ossetians with Russian passports. The figures could not be independently confirmed, but refugees who fled Tskhinvali over the weekend said hundreds had been killed.
Many found shelter in the Russian province of North Ossetia.
"The Georgians burned all of our homes," said one elderly woman, as she sat on a bench under a tree with three other white-haired survivors. "The Georgians say it is their land. Where is our land, then?"

Quoted Text

Russia drives deeper into Georgia
Bush presses Moscow to accept immediate cease-fi re
BY CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA AND DAVID NOWAK
The Associated Press

    ZUGDIDI, Georgia — Russian tanks roared deep into Georgia on Monday, launching a new western front in the conflict, and Russian planes staged air raids that sent people screaming and fleeing for cover in some towns.
    The escalating warfare brought sharp words from President Bush, who pressed Moscow to accept an immediate cease-fire and pull its troops out to avert a “dramatic and brutal escalation” of violence in the former Soviet republic.
    Russian forces for the first time moved well outside the two restive, pro-Russian provinces claimed by Georgia that lie at the heart of the dispute. An Associated Press reporter saw Russian troops in control of government buildings in this town just miles from the frontier and Russian troops were reported in nearby Senaki.
    Georgia’s president said his country had been sliced in half with the capture of a critical highway crossroads near the central city of Gori, and Russian warplanes launched new air raids across the country.
    The Russian Defense Ministry, through news agencies, denied it had captured Gori and also denied any intentions to advance on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.
    The western assault expanded the days-old war beyond the central breakaway region of South Ossetia, where a crackdown by Georgia last week drew a military response from Russia.
    While most Georgian forces were still busy fighting there, Russian troops opened the western attack by invading from a second separatist province, Abkhazia, that occupies Georgia’s coastal northwest arm.
    Russian forces moved into Senaki, 20 miles inland from the Black Sea, and seized police stations in Zugdidi, just outside the southern fringe of Abkhazia. Abkhazian allies took control of the nearby village of Kurga, according to witnesses and Georgian officials.
    U.N. officials B. Lynn Pascoe and Edmond Mulet in New York, speaking at an emergency Security Council meeting requested by Georgia, also confirmed that Russian troops have driven well beyond South Ossetia and Abkhazia, U.N. diplomats said on condition of anonymity because it was a closed session. They said Russian airborne troops were not meeting any resistance while taking control of Georgia’s Senaki army base.
    “A full military invasion of Georgia is going on,” Georgian Ambassador Irakli Alasania told reporters later. “Now I think Security Council has to act.”
    The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, told CNN late Monday that Russian forces were cleansing Abkhazia of ethnic Georgians.
    “I directly accuse Russia of ethnic cleansing,” he said. At the U.N. on Friday, each side accused the other of ethnic cleansing.
    By late Monday, Russian news agencies, citing the Defense Ministry, said troops had left Senaki “after liquidating the danger,” but did not give details.
    The new assault came despite a claim earlier in the day by a top Russian general that Russia had no plans to enter undisputed Georgian territory.
    Saakashvili earlier told a national security meeting that Russia had also taken central Gori, which is on Georgia’s only east-west highway, cutting off the eastern half of the nation from the western Black Sea coast.

Quoted Text

Russia calls halt to Georgia invasion
Five days of attacks have forced 100,000 to flee armored advance
BY CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA AND MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI
The Associated Press

    TBILISI, Georgia — Declaring “the aggressor has been punished,” the Kremlin ordered a halt Tuesday to Russia’s devastating assault on Georgia — five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people.
    Georgia said the bombs and shells were still coming hours after the cease-fire was declared, and its President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russia’s aim all along was not to gain control of two disputed provinces but to “destroy” the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current U.S. ally.
    Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in Moscow, said Georgia had paid enough for its attack on South Ossetia, a separatist region along the Russian border with close ties to Russia.
    “The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganized,” Medvedev said.
    Still, the president ordered his defense minister at a televised Kremlin meeting: “If there are any emerging hotbeds of resistance or any aggressive actions, you should take steps to destroy them.”
    Hours later, Saakashvili told reporters that he generally accepted the cease-fire plan negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which calls for both sides to move back to their positions before fighting erupted.
    Saakashvili told reporters that he agreed to the “general principles” of the deal but said he saw no reason to sign it as it was only a “political document.”
    Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were believed to have died since Georgia launched its crackdown on South Ossetia on Thursday, drawing the punishing response from its much larger northern neighbor.
    There was evidence Russian forces were attacking Georgian targets within hours of Medvedev’s televised order, if not after.
    An Associated Press reporter saw 135 Russian military vehicles headed toward the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia.
    Georgian officials said Russia was attacking their troops in the gorge, but a commander in Abkhazia said only local forces, not Russian ones, were involved in push the Georgians out of the region.
    The commander, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zaitsev, said the Russian-backed separatist forces in Abkhazia had driven Georgian troops out of the gorge, their last stronghold in the region, after days of air and artillery strikes.
    Hours before Medvedev’s order, Russian jets bombed the crossroads city of Gori, near South Ossetia. The post office and university there were burning, but the city was all but deserted after most remaining residents and Georgian soldiers fled.
    Saakashvili, speaking to thousands at a square in the capital of Tbilisi, red and white Georgian fl ags fluttering in the crowd, said the Russian invasion was not about the two disputed provinces.
    “They just don’t want freedom, and that’s why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it,” he declared.
    Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in the separatist province of South Ossetia. The claim couldn’t be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.
    The overall death toll was expected to rise because large areas of Georgia were still too dangerous for journalists to enter and see the true scope of the damage.
    The first relief flight from the U.N. refugee agency arrived in Georgia as the number of people uprooted by the conflict neared 100,000. Thousands streamed into the capital. Those left behind in devastated regions of Georgia cowered in ratinfested cellars or wandered nearly deserted cities.
In Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian provincial capital now under Russian control, the body of a Georgian soldier lay in the street along with debris as separatist fighters launched rockets at a Georgian plane soaring overhead.
    A tour by AP journalists found the heaviest damage around the government center. Near the city center, pieces of tanks lay near a bomb crater. The turret of one tank was blown into the front of the printing school across the street. A severed foot lay on the sidewalk nearby. Several residential areas seemed to have little damage beyond shattered windows.
    A poster hanging nearby showed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the words “Say yes to peace and stability.” Broken glass and other debris littered the ground.
    Besides the dead, tens of thousands of terrified people have fl ed the fighting — South Ossetians north to Russia, and Georgians east toward the capital of Tbilisi and west to the country’s Black Sea coast.
Amid the suggestions the military action was cooling down, the Russia-Georgia dispute reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued for ethnic cleansing.
Earlier the Russians accused the Georgians of genocide.
Russian officers accompanying journalists visiting Tskhinvali argued that the battle damage showed Georgian troops specifically targeted by Georgian troops. But the worst damage was confined to the area around the government center, and several residential areas seemed to have little damage, except for shattered windows, perhaps from bomb concussions.
    The conflict — and its Cold War echoes — continued to play out on the international stage. The leaders of five former Soviet bloc states spoke out against Russian domination at a rally in Tbilisi.
    “Our neighbor thinks it can fi ght us. We are telling it no,” said Polish President Lech Kaczynski, who was joined by the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine at the rally. Kaczynski says Russia wanted a return to “old times.”
    The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin told CNN his country is seeking details on what started the fighting.
    “We do not want to believe that the United States has given a green light to this adventurous act,” he said. “But our American colleagues are telling us that they’re investigating now what may have happened in the channels of communication for Mr. Saakashvili to have behaved in such a reckless manner.”

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US: Russia must keep its word to leave Georgia
By ANNE GEARAN, AP Diplomatic Writer

The United States challenged Russia to keep its word to end a crushing invasion of U.S.-backed Georgia, siding decisively with the former Soviet republic and rejecting Russian justifications.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, headed for emergency meetings on the crisis in Europe and in the Georgian capital, said Russia's now-weeklong military action in Georgia is a throwback to darker Cold War times.

"The message is that Russia has perhaps not accepted that it is time to move on from the Cold War and it is time to move to a new era in which relations between states are on the basis of equality, and sovereignty and economic integration," Rice said Wednesday.

The Bush administration is reeling from the near collapse of its closest friend among the former Soviet republics, a strategic Black Sea nation that is an emerging pathway for undeveloped energy reserves and that has worn its zeal for America and the West as a badge of honor.

As the United States mustered humanitarian aid for Georgia, President Bush demanded that Russia end all military activity inside its neighbor and withdraw all troops sent in recent days onto Georgian territory.

Bush announced that U.S. military assets and personnel would be deploying into the conflict zone. Though they are only going on a humanitarian mission, he made a point of noting that "we will use U.S. aircraft, as well as naval forces" to distribute supplies. He warned Russia not to impede relief efforts in any way.

All this appeared designed to answer criticism that Bush has not done enough to stand by his 2005 pledge, made from the center of Tbilisi before tens of thousands of citizens, to "stand with" the people of Georgia.

Amid some fear that Russian troops may be setting up for some type of medium-term occupation of parts of Georgia or even have intentions to press on to its capital of Tbilisi, Bush promised Wednesday to "rally the free world in the defense of a free Georgia."

The president sent Rice to France for meetings Thursday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has led the European pressure campaign on Russia. Speaking in grave tones in the Rose Garden, Bush decried Moscow's apparent violation of a cease-fire agreement.

He demanded that Russia "keep its word and act to end this crisis."

"The United States stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected," he said.

The president postponed Thursday's planned start of a two-week Texas vacation for a couple of days to monitor developments.

A Russian military convoy defied a cease-fire agreement Wednesday and rolled through a strategically important city in Georgia, where officials claimed fresh looting and bombing by the Russians and their allies.

The Kremlin announced Thursday that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting with the leaders of Georgia's two separatist provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Russia and its small neighbor had agreed Tuesday to a French-brokered cease-fire to end the dispute that began over two pro-Russian breakaway territories. The United States accuses Russia of pressing the war far beyond the initial conflict zone and threatening the democratically elected government in Georgia.

"I have to say that the reports are not encouraging about Russia's respect for this cease-fire," Rice said.

U.S. officials have had difficulty determining exactly what's happening on the ground in Georgia, despite considerable intelligence resources. U.S. spy satellites have been repositioned to refocus on the conflict area.

Rice said Moscow is harming its standing in the world and eligibility for global clubs whose eligibility depends on responsible behavior, but she made no explicit threats about U.S. retaliation.

"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," Rice said. "Things have changed."

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor and Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report.

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Georgia president signs cease-fire with Russia

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

A reluctant Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Friday he signed a cease-fire agreement with Russia and declared in the presence of the chief U.S. diplomat that the West had behaved in ways that invited the invasion.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she had been assured that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign an identical document. The United States says the pact protects the former Soviet republic's interests despite concessions to Moscow.

"With this signature by Georgia, this must take place and take place now," Rice said. She did not say what, if anything, the United States would do if Russia defies the truce.

Near tears at times, Saakashvili said he will "never, ever surrender" in the showdown with much-larger Russia.

"You are dealing with a people who despise anything human," Saakashvili said of invading Russian forces.

Saakashvili said the West sent a disastrous signal to Russia by denying Georgia a door to NATO membership.

Saakashvili, whose leadership is founded on a close alliance with Washington that has always aggravated Moscow, said that Russia had interpreted NATO's snub of Georgia as capitulation. He spoke hours after President Bush accused Russia of "bullying and intimidation" against Georgia. Bush, delivering a formal statement outside the Oval Office at the White House, said the people there chose freedom and "we will not cast them aside."

Saakashvili did not appear enthusiastic about the cease-fire pact, but Rice defended it as a good way to return all forces to their prewar positions. She said that the signed pact obligates Russia to withdraw forces from Georgia immediately.

"Georgia has been attacked," and the world must help ensure that the country's independence and borders remain intact, she said following nearly five hours of meetings with Saakashvili. Their joint news conference was delayed by more than three hours, a sign that the talks were difficult.

"This is not a done deal," Saakashvili said. "We need to do our utmost to deter such behavior in the future."

At one point, the beleaguered Georgian leader said: "Sorry for these emotions. But I feel emotion."

Rice said the time has come "to begin a discussion of the consequences of what Russia has done. This calls into question what role Russia really plans to play in international politics."

Apparently concerned that Saakashvili's lengthy tirade had set the wrong tone, Rice spoke briefly on her own before leaving Georgia.

"It's obviously a very emotional time here in Georgia," she said after visiting wounded people in a hospital.

"It's clearly a very emotional time but I think that it should still be seen that this was a productive day. I hope now that peace can return to Georgia and Georgians can return to a normal life."

Bush, preparing to travel to his Texas ranch earlier Friday, said that while away from Washington, he'll keep in close touch with Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century," Bush said. He reiterated Gates' assertion of Thursday that Moscow's behavior in Georgia has damaged its relationship with Washington and its Western allies.

Rice had said earlier that the immediate goal was to get Russian combat forces out of Georgia and more difficult questions about the status of the country's separatist regions and Russia's presence there could be addressed later.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Friday that 82 tons of humanitarian supplies have been delivered to Georgia so far in four aircraft flights. He said the U.S. military is planning to do another two flights each day through the weekend.

There are still roughly 100 U.S. military personnel in Georgia — ranging from military trainers to security personnel at the embassy. Some of the trainers are scheduled to leave because they are reservists and their tour is over, Whitman said.

"The United States would never ask Georgia to sign onto something where its interests were not protected," she told reporters aboard her plane as she flew to the Georgian capital from France where she met French President Nicolas Sarkozy who brokered the cease-fire.

The cease-fire require Russia to withdraw its combat forces from Georgia but allows Russian peacekeepers to remain in the breakaway region of South Ossetia and conduct limited patrols outside the region.

A draft of the document did not commit Russia to respecting Georgia's "territorial integrity," but rather refers to Georgian "independence" and "sovereignty." That means Moscow does not necessarily accept that Georgia governs South Ossetia and a larger separatist territory, Abkhazia.

Officials say the eventual status of the two areas will be worked out under existing U.N. Security Council resolutions which recognize Georgia's international borders. Those borders now include the two provinces where many Russian citizens and loyalists live.

The U.S. and its allies had been pushing for Russia to agree to restore the situation to the status quo before Georgian troops moved into South Ossetia last week, prompting Russia's severe response and seven days of bloodshed.

Now they have been forced to back down on the key issues of the mandate of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, which did not previously include outside patrols, and the territorial integrity question, which Russia ostensibly accepted before but no longer does.

U.S. officials concede the agreement is not perfect but maintain it will get Russian combat troops out of Georgia, ideally within days.

In addition to the cease-fire document, Rice carried with her a letter signed by Sarkozy that clarifies the special security measures that Russian peacekeepers will be allowed to take on Georgian soil, officials said.

The cease-fire would allow Russian peacekeepers who were in South Ossetia before the fighting broke out to stay and to patrol temporarily in a strip of up to 6.2 miles, or 10 kilometers, outside, officials said.

Officials say the expanded mandate would end as soon as a team of international monitors could be sent to observe, something they believe can be done in weeks.

___

AP Diplomatic Correspondent Anne Gearan contributed to this story from Washington.

Quoted Text

Russia digs in despite truce Cease-fire looks weak in Georgia
BY CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA The Associated Press

    IGOETI, Georgia — Russian forces built ramparts around tanks and posted sentries on a hill in central Georgia on Saturday, digging in despite Western pressure for Moscow to withdraw its forces under a cease-fire deal signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
    The United States and France said it appeared that Russia was defying the truce already. Russian troops still controlled two Georgian cities and the key east-west highway between them Saturday, cities well outside the breakaway provinces where earlier fighting was focused.
    “From my point of view — and I am in contact with the French — the Russians are perhaps already not honoring their
word,” U.S. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice
said.
    Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said Medvedev had signed the cease-fire deal and ordered its implementation but would not withdraw troops until Moscow is satisfied that security measures allowed under the agreement are effective. He said Russia would strengthen its peacekeeping contingent in South Ossetia, the separatist Georgian region at the center of more than a week of warfare that sharply soured relations between Moscow and the West.
    Asked how much time it would take, he responded: “As much as is needed.”
    President Bush warned Russia Saturday that it cannot lay claim to the two separatist regions in U.S.-backed Georgia even though their sympathies lie with Moscow. “There is no room for debate on this matter,” the president, with Rice, told reporters at his Texas ranch.
    Later Saturday, Georgia’s Foreign Ministry accused Russian army units and separatist fighters in one of the regions, Abkhazia, of taking over 13 villages and the Inguri hydropower plant, shifting the border of the Black Sea province toward the Inguri River.
    Abkhaz officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the late-night claim, and there was no information on whether the seizure involved violence.
    The villages and plant are in a U.N.-established buffer zone on Abkhazia’s edge, and it appeared that the separatists were bolstering their control over the zone after Russian-backed fighters forced Georgians out of their last stronghold in Abkhazia earlier this week.
    The tense peace pact in Georgia, a U.S. ally that has emerged as a proxy for conflict between an emboldened Russia and the West, calls for both Russian and Georgian forces to pull back to positions they held before fighting erupted Aug. 7 in the other breakaway province, South Ossetia in central Georgia.
    But freshly dug positions of Russian armor in the town of Igoeti, about 30 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi, showed that Russia was observing the truce at the pace and scope of its choosing.
    Rice noted that the text of the cease-fire agreement, negotiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current leader of the European Union, outlined a very limited mandate only for Russian peacekeepers who were in Georgia at the time hostilities escalated. She said the agreement specifies that these initial peacekeepers can have limited patrols in a prescribed area within the conflict zone and would not be allowed to go into Georgian urban areas or tie up a cross-country highway.
    According to Rice, Medvedev told Sarkozy that the minute the Georgian president signed the cease-fire agreement, Russian forces would begin to withdraw.
    Sarkozy said Saturday that the truce explicitly bars Russian troops from Gori or “any major urban area” of Georgia.
    Earlier Saturday, Russian forces dug shallow foxholes in the middle of Igoeti and parked tanks, one fl ying a Russian flag, along the road. In the afternoon, they withdrew from those positions to the town’s western outskirts. There, they set up defensive positions with tank cannons pointed back toward Georgian-held territory, where police and soldiers milled about, awaiting Russia’s next move.
    West of Igoeti, Russian troops were deployed in large numbers in and around the strategic city of Gori, which endured an intense Russian bombardment during the fighting that began when Georgia attacked its breakaway region of South Ossetia. Military vehicles on the side of the road were camouflaged with branches; a couple of soldiers slept on stretchers in the shade of the hulking machines.
    Russian troops effectively control the main artery running through the western half of Georgia because they surround the strategic central city of Gori and the city and air base of Senaki in the west. Both cities sit on the main east-west highway that slices through two Georgian mountain ranges.
    Controlling Senaki, which sits on a key intersection, also means the Russians control access to the Black Sea port city of Poti and the road north to Abkhazia. AP reporters have seen Russian troops there for days but noted a growing contingent Saturday and artillery guns and tanks pointed out from the city, which they appear to be using as a base for their sorties elsewhere in western Georgia.
    An Associated Press Television News team saw Russian soldiers pulling out of the Black Sea port of Poti Saturday after sinking Georgian naval vessels and ransacking the port. A picture of Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in the looted office of the Navy and Coast Guard had been vandalized, with the face scratched out.
    “They have robbed the military base and taken almost everything, and they have burned or sunk the stuff they could not carry,” port worker Zurab Simonia said.
    Lavrov was not specific about the security measures planned but suggested they would be limited mostly to South Ossetia, not Georgia proper. He accused Georgia of undermining security, citing the Russian military’s claim that it had averted an attack on a highway tunnel by stopping a car laden with grenade launchers and ammunition.
    “We are constantly encountering problems from the Georgian side, and everything will depend on how effectively and quickly these problems are resolved,” he said.
    Georgia, meanwhile, claimed that Russian forces blew up a railroad bridge Saturday. Russia denied it.
    The rival claims underscored the fragility of the cease-fire. Lavrov said the deal Saakashvili signed Friday differed from the one with Medvedev’s signature, with Saakashvili’s version lacking an introductory preamble. While that difference may appear to be a technicality, it could be one either side could cite if it wants to abandon the deal.
    The conflict erupted after Georgia launched a massive barrage to try to take control of South Ossetia. The Russian army quickly overwhelmed its neighbor’s forces and drove deep into Georgia, raising fears that it was planning on a long-term occupation.
    Even if Russian forces do withdraw from the rest of Georgia, Moscow appears likely to maintain strong control over South Ossetia. Lavrov said Thursday that Georgia can “forget about” South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which broke from Georgian government control in early 1990s wars, and their future status is shaping up as a potentially explosive source of tension.
    In Texas, Bush said, “A major issue is Russia’s contention that the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia may not be a part of Georgia’s future. These regions are a part of Georgia, and the international community has repeatedly made clear that they will remain so.”
    Russia views the growing relationship between the U.S. and Georgia as an encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence and a threat to its clout. The fighting came amid U.S. efforts to close a deal on a missile shield based in former Soviet satellites in Europe, an issue already damaging ties with its former Cold War foe.

Quoted Text

Quoted Text

Who Started Cold War II


by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 08/19/2008 ET


The American people should be eternally grateful to Old Europe for having spiked the Bush-McCain plan to bring Georgia into NATO.

Had Georgia been in NATO when Mikheil Saakashvili invaded South Ossetia, we would be eyeball to eyeball with Russia, facing war in the Caucasus, where Moscow's superiority is as great as U.S. superiority in the Caribbean during the Cuban missile crisis.

If the Russia-Georgia war proves nothing else, it is the insanity of giving erratic hotheads in volatile nations the power to drag the United States into war.

From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, U.S. presidents have sought to avoid shooting wars with Russia, even when the Bear was at its most beastly.

Truman refused to use force to break Stalin's Berlin blockade. Ike refused to intervene when the Butcher of Budapest drowned the Hungarian Revolution in blood. LBJ sat impotent as Leonid Brezhnev's tanks crushed the Prague Spring. Jimmy Carter's response to Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Moscow Olympics. When Brezhnev ordered his Warsaw satraps to crush Solidarity and shot down a South Korean airliner killing scores of U.S. citizens, including a congressman, Reagan did -- nothing.

These presidents were not cowards. They simply would not go to war when no vital U.S. interest was at risk to justify a war. Yet, had George W. Bush prevailed and were Georgia in NATO, U.S. Marines could be fighting Russian troops over whose flag should fly over a province of 70,000 South Ossetians who prefer Russians to Georgians.

The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the old Leningrad.

Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet. This is altogether a bridge too far.

And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to such crowding by the British Empire?

As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to Moscow.

If Cold War II is coming, who started it, if not us?
The swift and decisive action of Putin's army in running the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia in 24 hours after Saakashvili began his barrage and invasion suggests Putin knew exactly what Saakashvili was up to and dropped the hammer on him.

What did we know? Did we know Georgia was about to walk into Putin's trap? Did we not see the Russians lying in wait north of the border? Did we give Saakashvili a green light?

Joe Biden ought to be conducting public hearings on who caused this U.S. humiliation.

The war in Georgia has exposed the dangerous overextension of U.S. power. There is no way America can fight a war with Russia in the Caucasus with our army tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor should we. Hence, it is demented to be offering, as John McCain and Barack Obama are, NATO membership to Tbilisi.

The United States must decide whether it wants a partner in a flawed Russia or a second Cold War. For if we want another Cold War, we are, by cutting Russia out of the oil of the Caspian and pushing NATO into her face, going about it exactly the right way.
Vladimir Putin is no Stalin. He is a nationalist determined, as ruler of a proud and powerful country, to assert his nation's primacy in its own sphere, just as U.S. presidents from James Monroe to Bush have done on our side of the Atlantic.

A resurgent Russia is no threat to any vital interests of the United States. It is a threat to an American Empire that presumes some God-given right to plant U.S. military power in the backyard or on the front porch of Mother Russia.

Who rules Abkhazia and South Ossetia is none of our business. And after this madcap adventure of Saakashvili, why not let the people of these provinces decide their own future in plebiscites conducted by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe?

As for Saakashvili, he's probably toast in Tbilisi after this stunt. Let the neocons find him an endowed chair at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The media got it wrong: Russia did not invade Georgia, it’s the other way around
BY EDWIN D. REILLY JR. For the Sunday Gazette

    Being on vacation, I had told my editor that I wouldn’t have a new piece for this Sunday, but something happened that changed my mind. Whether home or away, libraries are my favorite haunt, so, while waiting for a table at the nearby Captain’s Table, Jean and I sat on a bench in front of the Chatham library on Cape Cod.
    Sitting near us a woman on another bench and a young man on the library steps were each typing furiously on their laptops. Could they be within range of Wi-Fi, I wondered? So I asked the young man if he was picking up a signal from the (closed!) library. “Why, yes,” he said, “this is the best time to do so, given that there is no one inside with whom I have to share bandwidth and thus reduce response time.”
    I became conscience-stricken by such rampant assiduousness, and since our rented cottage was a hot spot, I went back to my own laptop after dinner, determined to tell you how the mainstream press has, by and large, gotten the Russian battle with South Ossetia all wrong.
    The impression that most Associated Press stories conveyed, and some even in The New York Times, has been that Russia invaded part of Georgia. But it is closer to the truth that the opposite is true. This finally sank into my cranium when I read a column in, of all places, the Cape Cod Times of Aug. 18, the day of this epiphany. The author, Gwynne Dyer, an international columnist from London, wrote: “Russia didn’t threaten Georgia; it responded to a surprise attack on South Ossetia, a territory where there were Russian [and Georgian] peacekeeping troops by international agreement. It has not occupied Georgia’s capital, nor has it overthrown the government (though the Georgians may do that themselves when they realize what a fool [their President, Mikhail] Saakashvili has been).”
    Yes, the Russians overreacted, drove deep into Georgian territory well beyond South Ossetia, killed many people, and have started to withdraw back into South Ossetia. But that’s as far as they will go. Fully 70 percent of the greatly depleted population of that “province,” or whatever it is, hold Russian citi- zenship and very much want to become, like North Ossetia (to its north, obviously) one of the units of the Russian Federation.
    Now, with our forces so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is nothing that the United States can do about this. It is certainly not going to start a third world war, hot or cold, over it. President Bush may or may not realize this, but surely both presidential candidates do. But they have no recourse except to posture, saying of the Russians, in effect, “There they go again.”
    Sen. Obama suggests that the matter be referred to the U.N. Security Council, forgetting (?) that in that venue, Russia has veto power. Even worse, Sen. McCain, whose documented forgetfulness is that Afghanistan lies between Iraq and Pakistan and hence the latter two have no common border, blusters like the Great Oz behind a curtain. And the voters are sure to look behind it.
    As of 20 years ago, South Ossetia had 65,000 native Ossetians, 29,000 people who considered themselves Georgians, and practically no “Russians.” By now, many of each have fled the area, and most of those left consider themselves Russian. Despite this fact, and despite the fact that his army has been obliterated, President Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed that “Georgia will never give up a square kilometer of its territory.” Essentially, it already has.
GEOGRAPHIC LOCALE
    But before we venture further, just what and where is this foreign Georgia and the rebellious South Ossetia contained therein? Wikipedia to the rescue.
    The country of Georgia lies to the south of the Russian Federation (Russia), from which it is separated by a natural boundary formed by the Caucasus mountain range. It is a transcontinental country, partially in Eastern Europe and partially in Southwest Asia. It is bordered to the east by Azerbaijan, to the west by the Black Sea, to the south by Armenia, and to the southwest by Turkey. Georgia’s area, about 27,000 square miles, lies between that of our states of South Carolina and West Virginia, both breakaway federal entities of our own, the latter because it took the Union side in our Civil War. Georgia’s population of 4.6 million is comparable to that of our Alabama and is about half of our own Georgia.
    After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic from 1918 until the Red Army’s invasion of 1921. Georgia became part of the USSR in 1922 and did not regain its independence until 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. Georgia is currently a representative democracy and is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and the World Trade Organization. To the consternation of Russia, the country seeks to join NATO and, in the longer term, admission to the European Union.
    The map of the country of Georgia looks much like a crocodile, but its tail to the northwest and its right hind leg are, respectively, the self-proclaimed independent republics of Abkhazia and Adjara, but no other country other than Georgia — certainly not Russia, which has designs on the former — has recognized them. Historically, there have been dust-ups over the status of both, but they were nothing compared to the currently raging battle over the status of South Ossetia.
    South Ossetia is a region in the extreme north of Georgia, just over the border from the Russian federal republic (oblast) of North Ossetia. It declared itself to be the independent “Republic of South Ossetia” early in the 1990s. The capital of South Ossetia is Tskhinvali, even though South Ossetia lies within the Georgian region called Shida Kartli, whose capital is Gori.
NOT RECOGNIZED
    The claimed independence has not been diplomatically recognized by any member of the United Nations, which continues to regard South Ossetia as part of Georgia. Until the armed conflict of this month, Georgia had retained control over parts of the region’s eastern and southern districts where it created, in April 2007, the Provisional Administrative Entity of South Ossetia.
    Barack Obama has promised me (and at least a million others) that he will send us e-mail (or one of those hated text messages) that tell us of his vice presidential choice. You may know who that is by the time you read this. For his sake, I hope it is Sen. Joe Biden, the only politician left in Washington who makes sense when he speaks of foreign affairs. As to domestic affairs, we’ve had our fill of those.

Quoted Text

Barack Obama has promised me (and at least a million others) that he will send us e-mail (or one of those hated text messages) that tell us of his vice presidential choice. You may know who that is by the time you read this. For his sake, I hope it is Sen. Joe Biden, the only politician left in Washington who makes sense when he speaks of foreign affairs. As to domestic affairs, we’ve had our fill of those.

Quoted Text

Russian invasion recalls Hitler and Czechs

    In 1938, the Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia, with a large population of ethnic Germans. The Nazis, together with their Sudeten German allies, charged that these Germans were being “oppressed” by the Czech government and demanded incorporation of the region into Nazi Germany. Using that as an excuse, the Sudetenland was occupied by Hitler between Oct. 1 and Oct. 10, 1938.
    Fast-forward to August 2008: The provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were a part of Georgia with a large population of people holding Russian passports. The Russian government’s de facto dicta-thug, Vladimir Putin, demands independence for these regions in order to escape Georgian “oppression.” Using that as the excuse to do so, South Ossetia and Abkhazia were occupied by Russia.
    The reality of the situation is that Georgia, a good friend of the West and especially the United States, was about to be offered membership in NATO and Russia did not want this to happen. Also, a major oil pipeline carrying Caspian region natural gas passes through Georgia, and Russia wants to control it.
    The United Nations is incapable of dealing with the situation and stands on the sidelines wringing its hands while portions of a member nation are gobbled up by another member nation. Western Europe is also unwilling to deal with the situation because they are 99 percent dependent on Russian oil and natural gas supplies for their very existence. In 1938 this type of aggression touched off World War II, and perhaps 40 million people died before we had peace in our time. Are we seeing the beginning of World War III, or perhaps Cold War II? I guarantee we will not have “peace in our time.”
    Finally, a reminder: “Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them.” — George Santayana
    VICTOR FRAENCKEL
    Schenectady