Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
October 7, 2008
Pg. 10
By Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]KARALETI[/FONT], Georgia — Russia accused the Georgian government on Monday of “seeking to provoke new hostilities” even as Russian peacekeepers were dismantling key checkpoints outside the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Authorities in Abkhazia said that an Abkhaz border guard was killed Monday in an exchange of fire with gunmen on the Georgian side. On Friday, a car bomb in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, killed eight Russian soldiers and three Ossetian civilians.
Russia has said Georgia is responsible for these attacks and three others in the disputed territories in recent days. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, made a formal appeal to his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, on Monday, asking the European Union to “take necessary measures to stabilize the situation in keeping with its commitments.”
A peace deal brokered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had set this Friday as the deadline for Russian troops to withdraw from the buffer zones outside the enclaves.
Shota Utiashvili, a senior official at Georgia’s Interior Ministry, denied any Georgian involvement in the attacks, saying that Georgia opposed any delay in the withdrawal.
“This a completely absurd accusation,” he said.
In Karaleti, a village two miles north of Gori, ethnic Georgians passed freely through a Russian checkpoint where soldiers were busy winding up barbed wire, washing their clothes and packing their possessions.
A local farmer, Vitaly Shavshishvili, 34, had heard the Russians were leaving, but he wanted to see for himself. Though Karaleti has been peaceful, he said, his neighbors were afraid to leave their homes after dark, and he prayed for the return of the Georgian police.
In the aftermath of the August war between the countries, he said, his harvest of fruits and vegetables had rotted on the vine, costing him about $3,500, which he had hoped would last him a whole year. “Now we have hope only in God,” he said. “We have nothing to survive.”
Galina Gogiashvili, 68, who passed the checkpoint on a donkey cart, said she thought she would never feel safe in her home again. Even the returning Georgian authorities scared her.
“At least they should give us all guns, so we can defend ourselves,” she said.
Russian troops have been dismantling checkpoints for days, under the watch of some 200 European Union observers who began patrols in the buffer zone last week. Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, said early Monday that the six southernmost posts would be removed within 24 hours.
But the authorities in Abkhazia said that a border guard had been fatally wounded in a gunfight in the village of Nabakevi, near the border with Georgia. Military officials in Abkhazia also said a convoy of retreating peacekeepers had narrowly escaped being wounded in an explosion.
In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry blamed Georgia for the attacks. “The impression is that some forces in Tbilisi, who oppose the normal and smooth transition of functions in the security zones in South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Russian peacekeepers to European Union observers, are deliberately trying to escalate tensions and seeking to provoke new hostilities through a series of terrorist acts,” the statement read.
But Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian official, said that “there was no shootout with Georgian forces,” and that Georgia had no role in any attacks.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also protested allegations printed in the Russian news media that the car that exploded in Tskhinvali on Friday had traveled into the area as part of an O.S.C.E. convoy. Ambassador Terhi Hakala, head of the organization’s mission to Georgia, said she was “outraged” at the report.
“The spreading of untruthful propaganda about the mission — which includes several previous entirely false accounts connected with O.S.C.E. staff and premises — is a serious matter, endangers O.S.C.E. personnel and may be taken as a signal of unwillingness on the [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]part[/FONT] of those responsible to work constructively,” she said.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Olesya Vartanyan reported from Karaleti, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.[/FONT]
October 7, 2008
Pg. 10
By Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]KARALETI[/FONT], Georgia — Russia accused the Georgian government on Monday of “seeking to provoke new hostilities” even as Russian peacekeepers were dismantling key checkpoints outside the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Authorities in Abkhazia said that an Abkhaz border guard was killed Monday in an exchange of fire with gunmen on the Georgian side. On Friday, a car bomb in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, killed eight Russian soldiers and three Ossetian civilians.
Russia has said Georgia is responsible for these attacks and three others in the disputed territories in recent days. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, made a formal appeal to his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, on Monday, asking the European Union to “take necessary measures to stabilize the situation in keeping with its commitments.”
A peace deal brokered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had set this Friday as the deadline for Russian troops to withdraw from the buffer zones outside the enclaves.
Shota Utiashvili, a senior official at Georgia’s Interior Ministry, denied any Georgian involvement in the attacks, saying that Georgia opposed any delay in the withdrawal.
“This a completely absurd accusation,” he said.
In Karaleti, a village two miles north of Gori, ethnic Georgians passed freely through a Russian checkpoint where soldiers were busy winding up barbed wire, washing their clothes and packing their possessions.
A local farmer, Vitaly Shavshishvili, 34, had heard the Russians were leaving, but he wanted to see for himself. Though Karaleti has been peaceful, he said, his neighbors were afraid to leave their homes after dark, and he prayed for the return of the Georgian police.
In the aftermath of the August war between the countries, he said, his harvest of fruits and vegetables had rotted on the vine, costing him about $3,500, which he had hoped would last him a whole year. “Now we have hope only in God,” he said. “We have nothing to survive.”
Galina Gogiashvili, 68, who passed the checkpoint on a donkey cart, said she thought she would never feel safe in her home again. Even the returning Georgian authorities scared her.
“At least they should give us all guns, so we can defend ourselves,” she said.
Russian troops have been dismantling checkpoints for days, under the watch of some 200 European Union observers who began patrols in the buffer zone last week. Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, said early Monday that the six southernmost posts would be removed within 24 hours.
But the authorities in Abkhazia said that a border guard had been fatally wounded in a gunfight in the village of Nabakevi, near the border with Georgia. Military officials in Abkhazia also said a convoy of retreating peacekeepers had narrowly escaped being wounded in an explosion.
In a statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry blamed Georgia for the attacks. “The impression is that some forces in Tbilisi, who oppose the normal and smooth transition of functions in the security zones in South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Russian peacekeepers to European Union observers, are deliberately trying to escalate tensions and seeking to provoke new hostilities through a series of terrorist acts,” the statement read.
But Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian official, said that “there was no shootout with Georgian forces,” and that Georgia had no role in any attacks.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also protested allegations printed in the Russian news media that the car that exploded in Tskhinvali on Friday had traveled into the area as part of an O.S.C.E. convoy. Ambassador Terhi Hakala, head of the organization’s mission to Georgia, said she was “outraged” at the report.
“The spreading of untruthful propaganda about the mission — which includes several previous entirely false accounts connected with O.S.C.E. staff and premises — is a serious matter, endangers O.S.C.E. personnel and may be taken as a signal of unwillingness on the [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]part[/FONT] of those responsible to work constructively,” she said.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Olesya Vartanyan reported from Karaleti, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.[/FONT]