Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 8, 2008
By Steve Gutterman, Associated Press
TBILISI, Georgia -- On the eve of a European Union shuttle mission to persuade Russia to pull its troops back to prewar positions, Georgia's president vowed yesterday to regain control of two breakaway provinces with the help of "the rest of the world."
A month after the Aug. 7 outbreak of war in the region and weeks after a cease-fire was approved, Russian troops remain entrenched deep inside Georgian territory.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due in Moscow today at the head of an EU delegation charged with reducing tensions and ensuring Russian compliance with the cease-fire terms, which include withdrawing its troops to positions held before the fighting broke out. Russia says those troops are peacekeepers and that they are allowed under the accord.
Despite the presence of Russian troops on Georgian soil, President Mikheil Saakashvili said the West would help his country regain control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the separatist regions of Georgia recognized as independent nations by Moscow last month.
"Our territorial integrity will be restored, I am more convinced of this than ever," Saakashvili said in a televised appearance. "This will not be an easy process, but now this is a process between an irate Russia and the rest of the world."
In Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin insisted in an interview broadcast late Saturday that Russia was justified in its intervention in South Ossetia. He said there would be no cooling of ties with the West because the West depends on Russia's oil, gas and mineral wealth.
September 8, 2008
By Steve Gutterman, Associated Press
TBILISI, Georgia -- On the eve of a European Union shuttle mission to persuade Russia to pull its troops back to prewar positions, Georgia's president vowed yesterday to regain control of two breakaway provinces with the help of "the rest of the world."
A month after the Aug. 7 outbreak of war in the region and weeks after a cease-fire was approved, Russian troops remain entrenched deep inside Georgian territory.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due in Moscow today at the head of an EU delegation charged with reducing tensions and ensuring Russian compliance with the cease-fire terms, which include withdrawing its troops to positions held before the fighting broke out. Russia says those troops are peacekeepers and that they are allowed under the accord.
Despite the presence of Russian troops on Georgian soil, President Mikheil Saakashvili said the West would help his country regain control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the separatist regions of Georgia recognized as independent nations by Moscow last month.
"Our territorial integrity will be restored, I am more convinced of this than ever," Saakashvili said in a televised appearance. "This will not be an easy process, but now this is a process between an irate Russia and the rest of the world."
In Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin insisted in an interview broadcast late Saturday that Russia was justified in its intervention in South Ossetia. He said there would be no cooling of ties with the West because the West depends on Russia's oil, gas and mineral wealth.
