Georgia Says Cellphone Records Are Evidence Russia Started War

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
September 17, 2008
Pg. 14

By Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post Foreign Service
TBILISI, Georgia, Sept. 16 -- Georgian authorities on Tuesday released recordings of cellphone calls they say are evidence that significant numbers of Russian troops began moving into the breakaway region of South Ossetia on Aug. 6, a day before war with Russia started.
Earlier, Georgian authorities had said Russian forces came through a tunnel from Russia late on Aug. 7, which the Georgians describe as the act of aggression that triggered their decision to order their own forces into South Ossetia. Russia says its troops came through the tunnel on the evening of Aug. 7, but only after Georgia launched an attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.
Who started the war, and when, has become the subject of heated debate here and in Moscow. Both Russia and Georgia have struggled to portray themselves as acting in self-defense or, in Russia's case, in defense of its smaller neighbor.
The timing of the Russians' entry into the tunnel is significant because it could clarify whether the troop movement was an act of aggression or a reaction.
Georgian officials said that one intercepted call on Aug. 6, released to The Washington Post on Tuesday, was a conversation between Ossetian militia members discussing an Ossetian soldier who had been accidentally wounded by a Russian who came in with a column of Russian troops. "From these Russians, from the Russian army, someone unintentionally fired, and this boy was wounded," an Ossetian is heard saying on the call, which was played on a Georgian commercial network.
In an Aug. 7 call, a man the Georgians identify as a guard at the tunnel says that it is "full" of Russian military vehicles and that the Russians have asked local authorities to come and check it. The New York Times disclosed that call and others from Aug. 7 and 8 on Tuesday.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told reporters Tuesday that the transcripts of the calls provided "incontrovertible evidence" that Russian forces had entered South Ossetia well before Georgian forces went in.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko called the Georgian claim "not serious," according to the Associated Press, adding that major troop movements would have been tracked by satellites of NATO alliance members.
Georgia's interior minister, Vano Merabishvili, said that after hearing intelligence reports of Russian troop movement on Aug. 6, Georgian authorities spent a day confirming them before responding by moving their own forces toward South Ossetia.
Asked why Georgia did not publicize the Aug. 6 date earlier, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the cellphone call recordings were temporarily lost in the chaos of war that followed.
 
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