Month: August 2008

SAVING GEORGIA
by Ariel Cohen

Heritage.org
August 12, 2008
DC

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has announced that Moscow is putting
on hold hostilities in Georgia, apparently due to the pleas from the
U.S. and Europe to cease aggression against Georgia. Many questions
remain open, including:

Signature and stability of the cease-fire; The timing of the Russian
withdrawal from sovereign Georgian territory; Recognition of full
Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity; and Terminating
attempts by Moscow to remove Georgian leadership by force.

The threats to Georgia’s political survival and to Southern Caucasus
states’ independence have not disappeared, and Russia’s massive use
of force against its small neighbor remains appalling and deeply
troubling.

As the Olympic Games opened Friday, August 8, the tragic and
ominous conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted as well. Moscow
responded with overwhelming force to the Georgian fire on Tskhinvali,
capital of South Ossetia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew from
the Beijing Olympics to Vladikavkaz, taking control of the military
operations. Putin sidelined his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, thereby
leaving no doubt as to who is in charge.

The 58th Russian Army of the North Caucasus Military District
rolled into South Ossetia, reinforced by the 76th Airborne "Pskov"
Division. The Black Sea Fleet blockaded Georgian coast and shelled
the strategic port of Poti. Cossacks from the neighboring Russian
territories moved in to combat the Georgians as well.

Following the third day of heavy fighting, and after rejecting the
Georgian cease-fire offer, Russia has struck far beyond contested
South Ossetia, opening up a second front in Abkhazia. Pushing deep
into Georgia, the Russian Army has seized military bases and several
towns including Senaki and Zugdidi, as well as the key Georgian
city of Gori, the birthplace of the Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin. By
taking Gori and the east-west highway passing through the town, the
Russians have effectively cut the country in half, severing its main
transportation artery.

Russian forces have also bombed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the
only avenue for exporting Central Asian energy, which is independent of
Russian control. Throwing aside any pretense of "stopping a genocide,"
the Russian troops pushed forward and, on Monday evening, were 20
kilometers away from the Georgian capital Tbilisi. There is a good
chance that these troops will advance on Tbilisi in the next 24 hours.

Russia’s goals for the war with Georgia are far-reaching and include:

Expulsion of Georgian troops and termination of Georgian sovereignty in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia; "Regime change" by bringing down President
Mikheil Saakashvili and installing a more pro-Russian leadership in
Tbilisi; Preventing Georgia from joining NATO and sending a strong
message to Ukraine that its insistence on NATO membership may lead to
war and/or its dismemberment; Shifting control of the Caucasus, and
especially over strategic energy pipelines, by controlling Georgia;
and Recreating a 19th-century-style sphere of influence in the former
Soviet Union, by the use of force if necessary.

Rebuilding the Russian Empire: The Challenge to Europe’s Status Quo

Russian relations with Georgia were the worst among the post-Soviet
states. In addition to fanning the flames of separatism in South
Ossetia since 1990, Russia militarily supported separatists in Abkhazia
(1992-93), which is also a part of Georgian territory. Russia also
had a cantankerous relationship with then-Georgian President Eduard
Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, whom hardliners
in Moscow blamed for the Soviet withdrawal from Central and Eastern
Europe. In the 1990s, there were two assassination attempts against
Shevardnadze, and elements of the Russian state, such as secret
services or military intelligence, came under suspicion both times.

Russia has long prepared its aggression against Georgia’s pro-Western
President Mikheil Saakashvili, in order to undermine his rule and
prevent Georgia from joining NATO. Despite claims about oppressed
minority status, the separatist South Ossetian leadership is mostly
ethnic Russians, many of whom served in the KGB, the Soviet secret
police, the Russian military, or the Soviet communist party.

In recent years, Moscow granted the majority of Abkhazs and South
Ossetians Russian citizenship and moved to establish close economic
and bureaucratic ties with the two separatist republics, effectively
enacting a creeping annexation of both territories.

The use of Russian citizenship to create a "protected" population
residing in a neighboring state to undermine its sovereignty is a
slippery slope that is now leading to a redrawing of the former Soviet
borders. Brave voices asserted that Russia lost the moral right for
peacekeeping in Abkhazia and South Ossetia when, circumventing the
leadership of sovereign Georgia, it

became close friends with the de facto organs of power of these
self-declared entities. Now, casting aside any decency, bringing
airborne units into Georgia, bombing territory that isn’t even part of
the former South Ossetian Autonomous Republic, Russia … has become
a party to an armed conflict.

No valiant Western voice issued this statement. As has so frequently
been the case throughout history, the above-mentioned statement was
made by a pitifully small but morally righteous group of Russian
human rights activists, led by Lev Ponomarev, Sergei Kovalyov, and
Yelena Bonner (Andrey Sakharov’s widow). The group proceeded to call
for Russia to be expelled from the Group of Eight (G-8), and for the
United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)
to impose sanctions on Russia.

Chilling Language, Strategic Actions

Aggression against Georgia also sends a strong signal to
Ukraine and Europe. Russia is playing a chess game of offense and
intimidation. Former president and current Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin spoke last spring about Russia "dismembering" Ukraine, another
NATO candidate, and detaching the Crimea, a peninsula that was
transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 when both were integral
parts of the Soviet Union.

Today, up to 50 percent of Ukrainian citizens speak Russian as
their first language, and ethnic Russians comprise approximately
one-fifth of Ukraine’s population. With encouragement from Moscow,
these people may be induced to follow South Ossetia and Abkhazia to
Mother Russia’s bosom. Yet Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders, such as
President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko,
have expressed a desire to join NATO, while pro-Moscow Ukrainian
Party of Regions effectively opposes membership. NATO opponents in
Ukraine are greatly encouraged by Russia’s action against Georgia.

Beyond this, Russia is demonstrating that it can sabotage American and
European Union (EU) declarations about integrating Commonwealth of
Independent States members into Western structures such as NATO. By
attempting to accomplish regime change in Georgia, Moscow is also
trying to gain control of the energy and transportation corridor
which connects Central Asia and Azerbaijan with the Black Sea and
ocean routes overseas–for oil, gas and other commodities.

A pro-Russian regime in Georgia will also bring the strategic
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Erzurum (Turkey) gas
pipeline under Moscow’s control. Such a development would undermine
any options of pro-Western orientation for Azerbaijan and Armenia,
along with any chances of resolving their conflict based on diplomacy
and Western-style cooperation.

The West’s Hour of Truth

The United States and its European allies must take all available
diplomatic measures to stop Russian aggression. To uphold the
international order, to repel aggression, and to advance our national
interests and those of the West at large, the U.S. should:

Send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Europe to coordinate
support for condemning Russian aggression in Georgia among our
allies. The U.S. and Europe should lead the world in demanding that
Russia withdraw all its troops from the territory of Georgia and
recognize Georgia’s territorial integrity; Convey to Russia that its
invasion of Georgia has forfeited its membership in the G-8 and may
derail its aspirations to join the World Trade Organization and to host
the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, only 200 kilometers from Georgia;
Push for great powers to speak out, including Germany, France, India,
Brazil, Japan, Korea, Turkey, and possibly China. This support would
"globalize" the condemnation; Continue pressure within the United
Nations Security Council and the General Assembly to achieve a
resolution that will voice full and unequivocal support for Georgian
territorial integrity, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and for
Russian troop withdrawal; Send international observers to Georgia
from OSCE, the EU and the United Nations in order to expand mediation
efforts to withdraw Russian forces; Begin talks at a neutral forum
such as the OSCE to finally settle the South Ossetian matter as well
as future Abkhazian problems. This can be done by granting these
territories full autonomy within the Georgian state, as Tbilisi
has repeatedly suggested; Reiterate NATO’s position on Ukraine,
which holds that the country will become a member of NATO through the
extension of a Membership Action Plan and that the member states look
forward to assessing Ukraine’s progress at the December 2008 meeting;
Announce the deployment of amphibious ships into the Black Sea as a
non-combatant Evacuation Operations, which will be coordinated with
all Black Sea littoral states; and Offer humanitarian assistance to
Georgia, such as aiding the wounded and refugees, and evacuating the
friends of the U.S. if necessary.

Beyond this, the United States, its allies, and other countries need to
send a strong signal to Moscow that creating 19th-century-style spheres
of influence and redrawing the borders of the former Soviet Union
is a danger to world peace. The U.S. and its European allies should
communicate to Moscow that its aggression will not stand and cannot
be accomplished without irreparable harm to Russia’s international
standing for decades to come. The U.S., its allies and Europe must
do everything possible to stop the aggression against Georgia.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian
Studies and International Energy Security in the Douglas and Sarah
Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn
and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The
Heritage Foundation.

GETTING GEORGIA’S WAR ON
By Mark Ames Reprinted with permission from The Nation

CBS News
August 12, 2008
NY

The Nation: What We Should Expect If John McCain Becomes Our Nation’s
Commander In Chief Comments 12

The outbreak of war in Georgia on Friday offers a disturbing and
somewhat surreal taste of what to expect from John McCain should he
become our nation’s Commander in Chief. As the centuries-old ethnic
animosities between Georgia and Ossetia boiled over into another armed
conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia, McCain issued a stark-raving
statement from Des Moines that is disturbingly reminiscent of the
language used in the lead-up to NATO’s war against Yugoslavia in 1999,
a war McCain zealously pushed for:

"We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council
to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to
contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation," McCain said.

Calling on NATO to "stabilize this dangerous situation" is not going
down well with Russia, where images of dead Russian peacekeepers and
of frightened Ossetian refugees streaming across its borders have
put the country in a very vengeful mood. It’s hard to imagine what
measures NATO could take under a McCain presidency, but in the mind
of a man who thinks US troops should stay in Iraq for 100 years, and
who runs around singing "Bomb Bomb Iran!" it’s not hard to guess —
and even harder not to be horrified by what it may mean come January
2009, should he win.

McCain’s call to NATO-ize the war is not only frightening, it’s also
delusional: both NATO and US forces are already stretched beyond the
breaking point, even by Joint Chief of Staff chairman Michael Millen’s
own recent assessment.

But McCain’s brain remains undeterred by reality, a fact that became
painfully clear today in Des Moines when he also demanded, "The US
should immediately convene an emergency session of the United Nations
Security Council to call on Russia to reverse course."

The problem with McCain’s bold demand about going to the UN is that
Russia already tried doing exactly what McCain called for — and got
rejected by McCain’s neocon pals in the Bush Administration. Early
this morning, Russia convened an emergency session of the UN Security
Council, calling on both sides to immediately cease hostilities,
return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force —
but the last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what
Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili refuses to do.

The Bush Administration showed that it too has no patience with crunchy
"renounce the use of force" resolutions. According to a Reuters report
from earlier in the day:

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency
session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a
Russian-drafted statement.

The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the United States,
Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a
phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required
both sides "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.

The meaning of this is clear: the United States and Britain are backing
Saakashvili’s invasion. Why would we back Saakashvili’s reckless
war, when last year even Bush was denouncing the Pinochet-wannabe’s
violent attack on his own people during a peaceful opposition protest
in Georgia’s capital, as well as shutting down the opposition media
and exiling of political opponents? That would be a brain-teaser if
the last seven years hadn’t answered this question so many painful
times already.

But with McCain, answering this is a little trickier. When he issued
today’s Des Moines statement calling for Russia to do what Russia
already did a few hours earlier, you have to ask yourself: either
McCain’s short-term memory is totally shot, encased in an impenetrable
tomb of aluminum-zirconium plaque… or worse, McCain simply doesn’t
give a damn about reality, he just wants to get Georgia’s war on,
as badly as Saakashvili does.

The awful truth is probably a combination of the two, which is the
worst of all worlds, considering McCain’s raving Russophobia, and
his campaign team’s financial and ideological ties to Saakashvili. As
has been reported, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor, neocon Randy
Scheunemann, has a long financial relationship with Saakashvili to
lobby his interests in the United States.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

In 2005, Mr. Scheunemann asked Sen. McCain to introduce a Senate
resolution expressing support for peace in the Russian-influenced
region of South Ossetia that wants to break away from Georgia, the
records show.

Such resolutions of Senate support are symbolic but helpful
to countries in their diplomatic relations. The Senate approved
Sen. McCain’s resolution in December 2005, and the Georgian Embassy
posted the text on its Web site.

Sen. McCain has endorsed Georgia’s goal of entering NATO, a matter
for which the country hired Mr. Scheunemann to lobby. In 2006,
Senator McCain gave a speech at the Munich Conference on Security
in Germany in which he said "Georgia has implemented far-reaching
political, economic, and military reforms" and should enter NATO,
a text of his speech on the conference Web site shows.

Scheunemann, a bearded, pear-faced gun geek who looks like what might
have happened to a GI Joe doll if it had spent years stuffing its face
at pricey restaurants while power-schmoozing politicians and petty
dictators, also worked for recently-disgraced Bush fundraiser Stephen
Payne, lobbying for his Caspian Alliance oil business. The Caspian
oil pipeline runs through Georgia, the main reason that country has
tugged the heartstrings of neocons and oil plutocrats for at least
a decade or more.

In 2006, McCain visited Georgia and denounced the South Ossetian
separatists, proving that Scheunemann wasn’t wasting his Georgian
sponsor’s money. At a speech he gave in a Georgian army base in
Senaki, McCain declared that Georgia was America’s "best friend,"
and that Russian peacekeepers should be thrown out.

Today, Georgian forces from that same Senaki base are part of the
invasion force into South Ossetia, an invasion that has left scores
— perhaps hundreds — of dead locals, at least ten dead Russian
peacekeepers, and 140 million pissed-off Russians calling for blood.

Lost in all of this is not only the question of why America would risk
an apocalypse to help a petty dictator like Saakashvili get control
of a region that doesn’t want any part of him. But no one’s bothering
to ask what the Ossetians themselves think about it, or why they’re
fighting for their independence in the first place. That’s because the
Georgians — with help from lobbyists like Scheunemann — have been
pushing the line that South Ossetia is a fiction, a construct of evil
Kremlin neo-Stalinists, rather than a people with a genuine grievance.

A few years ago, I had an Ossetian working as the sales director for
my now-defunct newspaper, The eXile. After listening to me rave about
how much I always (and still do) like the Georgians, he finally lost
it and told me another side to Georgian history, explaining how the
Georgians had always mistreated the Ossetians, and how the South
Ossetians wanted to reunite with North Ossetia in order to avoid
being swallowed up, and how this conflict goes way back, long before
the Soviet Union days. It was clear that the Ossetian-Georgian hatred
was old and deep, like many ethnic conflicts in this region. Indeed, a
number of Caucasian ethnic groups still harbor deep resentment towards
Georgia, accusing them of imperialism, chauvinism and arrogance.

One example of this can be found in historian Bruce Lincoln’s book,
"Red Victory", in which he writes about the period of Georgia’s
brief independence from 1917 to 1921, a time when Georgia was backed
by Britain:

the Georgian leaders quickly moved to widen their borders at
the expense of their Armenian and Azerbaijani neighbors, and
their territorial greed astounded foreign observers. ‘The free and
independent socialist democratic state of Georgia will always remain
in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist small nation,"
one British journalist wrote…. "Both in territory snatching outside
and bureaucratic tyranny inside, its chauvinism was beyond all bounds."

On Thursday, following intense Georgian shelling and katyusha
rocketing into Tskhinvali, refugees streamed out of South Ossetia
telling reporters that the Georgians had completely leveled entire
villages and most of Tskhinvali, leaving "piles of corpses" in the
streets, over 1,000 by some counts. Among the dead are at least
ten Russian peacekeepers, who fell after their base was attacked by
Georgian forces. Reports also say that Georgian forces destroyed a
hotel where Russian journalists were staying.

In response, Russian jets bombed Georgian positions both inside
South Ossetia and into Georgia proper, attacking one base where
American military instructors are quartered (no Americans were
reported hurt). By mid-afternoon Moscow time, as local television
showed burning homes and Ossetian women and children huddling in
bomb shelters, armored Russian columns were crossing into Georgian
territory, and Georgia’s President called for a total mobilization
of military-aged men for war with Russia.

The invasion was backed up by a PR offensive so layered and
sophisticated that I even got an hysterical call today from a hedge
fund manager in New York, screaming about an "investor call" that
Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze made this morning with some
fifty leading Western investment bank managers and analysts. I’ve
since seen a J.P. Morgan summary of the conference call, which pretty
much reflects the talking points later picked up by the US media.

These kinds of conference calls are generally conducted by the heads
of companies in order to give banking analysts guidance. But as the
hedge fund manager told me today, "The reason Lado did this is because
he knew the enormous PR value that Georgia would gain by going to
the money people and analysts, particularly since Georgia is clearly
the aggressor this time." As a former investment banker who worked in
London and who used to head the Bank of Georgia, Gurgenidze knew what
he was doing. "Lado is a former banker himself, so he knew that by
framing the conflict for the most influential bankers and analysts in
New York, that these power bankers would then write up reports and go
on CNBC and argue Lado Gurgenidze’s talking points. It was brilliant,
and now you’re starting to see the American media shift its coverage
from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin,
that it’s Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia."

The really scary thing about this investor conference call is that
it suggests real planning. As the hedge fund manager told me, "These
things aren’t set up on an hour’s notice."

Where this war is leading is impossible to say, but as Iraq
and Afghanistan, not to mention Chechnya, have shown, wars have a
funny way of lasting longer, costing more in money and lives, and
snuffing out whatever individual liberties the affected populations
may have. As good as this war is for Saakashvili, who has become
increasingly unpopular at home and abroad, or for McCain, whose poll
numbers seem to rise every time the plaque devours another lobe of
his brain, it also bodes well for the resurgent Prime Minister Putin,
who seems to have become increasingly peeved with his hand-picked
successor, President Dmitry Medvedev’s flickering independence and
his liberalizer shtick. There’s nothing like a good war to snuff out
an uppity sois-disant liberal who’s getting in your way–even McCain
can still grasp this concept.

As I’m filing this, Russian forces are battling to take back
Tskhinvali, while Saakashvili has been alternately claiming to have
pulled his forces back, or that his forces are in full control of
the city and defeating the Russians. Meanwhile, Georgia has been on a
massive, successful, multi-layered PR offensive in the West, helped
by years of cultivating people like John McCain as well as the army
of neocons and old cold warriors who naturally gravitate to a fight
with Russia.

GOOGLE EMBROILED IN GEORGIAN CONFLICT

Information Age
12th August 2008
UK

Georgian civil infrastructure removed from Google Maps while
cyber-attack victims seek refuge on Google-owned blogs

In war, infrastructure is one of the first targets. And in the midst
of the hostilities between Russia and Georgia, search engine giant
Google has been trying to ensure its global computing infrastructure
does not aid either side in the conflict.

Yesterday, it emerged that the company had removed details of all
roads, towns and cities in Georgia from its Google Maps online
mapping service, as well as from the maps of neighbouring countries
Azerbaijan and Armenia. According to the Azerbaijan Press Agency,
the relevant maps went blank as soon as fighting broke out. However,
satellite information was still available earlier today.

Several observers highlighted the fact that Google co-founder Sergey
Brin is Moscow-born.

Meanwhile, Google is involuntarily providing cyber-refuge to Georgian
websites that have been disrupted by Russian hackers. Georgian news
site Civil.ge relocated to a domain on Google’s Blogger blogging
infrastructure after a cyber-attack, reportedly originating in Russia,
took the website down.

Even Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is using the Blogger
infrastructure to disseminate information: georgiamfa.blogspot.com/

Further reading

Georgian president suffers cyber attack A website belonging to Georgian
president Mikheil Saakashvili was brought down over the weekend,
allegedly by a botnet of Russian origin

Russia in midst of cyber war The attacks appear similar in character
to those perpetrated against neighbouring state Estonia.

PRESIDENT SAAKASHVILI DECLARES ABOUT WITHDRAWAL OF GEORGIA FROM THE CIS

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

TBILISI, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: President of Georgia Mikhail
Saakashvili declared today about withdrawal of Georgia from the
CIS. "We have decided that Georgia will leave the CIS," he said
in Tbilisi speaking in front of thousands of supporters gathered
outside parliament.

"We finally say farewell to the Soviet Union, USSR will never return
here again. We urge Ukraine and other countries to also leave the
Commonwealth of Independent States, which is dominated by Russia
without taking into consideration the opinion of other countries,"
he said.

ARMENIAN MINISTER SAYS FIGHTING IN GEORGIA HAS NOT AFFECTED ARMENIA’S IMPORTS AND EXPORTS

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Transport and Communication
minister Gurgen Sargsian said today the ongoing fighting in Georgia
has not affected Armenia’s imports and exports. According to him,
there is no shortage of any food commodity in Armenia.

The minister’s remarks came as Armenians have been buying in greater
amounts basic food stuff, but the minister said there was no reason
to panic.

Asked to explain why liquefied gas stations are selling gas to
motorists in limited volume, the minister said there were no reasons
to do so. He said it might have been done by owners to force stepped
up purchase.

The minister again said there were no problems concerning import and
export of goods.

Regarding the fact that Georgia has reduced the volume of Russian
natural gas shipped to Armenia via its territory by 30 percent,
the minister said it might have been prompted by what he called
‘economic motives,’ saying gas supplies to Armenia had been cut in
the past too when there was no tension between Russia and Georgia.

"I do not think that these developments pose any threat to Armenia’s
security. The situation in our country is controlled by the authorities
and all problems caused by the war in Georgia are being solved,"
he said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA’S RAIL COMMUNICATION WITH GEORGIA HAS NOT BEEN AFFECTED BY GEORGIA FIGHTING

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: Transport and Communication Minister
Gurgen Sargsian said today Armenia’s rail communication with Georgia
has not been affected by the fighting in Georgia. "There have been
no changes in the train schedule and trains from Yerevan to Tbilisi
and Batumi continue to run as planned," he said today to journalists.

He said all Armenia-bound goods that were at Bagratashen crossing on
the border with Georgia were brought to Armenia, including ten railways
cars with petrol, 12 cars with kerosene for aircrafts, 11 cars with
diesel fuel, 4 cars with wheat and 24 cars with different commodities.

According to the minister, there are 18 cars with Armenia-bound wheat
now in Georgia. He said the wheat was unloaded two days ago at Poti
port into railway cars and will arrive soon in Armenia.

He said thousands of Armenian citizens had been already evacuated
from Georgia by buses and minibuses. The convoys of Armenian evacuees,
led by Georgian police patrols, move along the road that runs through
Georgia’s Armenian- populated Javakheti region to the Bavra border
crossing in northwestern Armenia, he said.

ARMENIAN WEIGHTLIFTER TIGRAN MARTIROSIAN WINS BRONZE MEDAL IN BEIJING

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS; Armenian weightlifter in Beijing
Olympic Games 20-year old Tigran Martirosian (69 kg) from Beijing
won bronze medal. This is the second bronze medal won by Armenian
athlete. Armenian Greco-Roman style wrestler Roman Amoyan (55 kg)
also won bronze medal.

The winner of the gold medal was Chinese Lyao Chim, the silver was
taken by Marcelas Dabayan from France.

OTHER 4,450 ARMENIAN CITIZENS TRANSPORTED FROM GEORGIA TO ARMENIA

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Consulate General in Batumi
continues carrying out works towards transporting Armenian citizens
from Georgia to Armenia. Armenian Foreign Ministry press service told
Armenpress that from August 11 to 12, 4,450 Armenian citizens were
transported to Armenia.

With the support of the relevant Armenian establishments around
750 foreigners entered Armenia with facilitated procedures, among
them diplomats accredited in Georgia, officials from international
organizations and members of their families.

Today as of 5:00 p.m. no Armenian citizen suffered from the
developments in Georgia.

DEFENSE MINISTER SEYRAN OHANIAN MEETS GEORGIA’S AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Defense Minister Seyran
Ohanian met today with Georgia’s ambassador to Armenia, Revaz
Gachechiladze at the latter’s request. The ambassador was accompanied
by Colonel Murtaz Gujejiani, the new military attache of the embassy,
who was introduced to the Armenian minister.

A spokesman for the ministry, Seyran Shahsuvarian, told Armenpress
that the minister conveyed his deep condolences in connection with
death of civilians in the latest developments in Georgia.

The spokesman said the minister and his guests spoke about the 3rd and
4-th stages of the August 18-22 military games Rubezh-2008, to be held
in Armenia within the frameworks of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization, in which Georgia is to be represented as an observer.

The ambassador denied Azerbaijani and Georgian media reports claiming
that Georgia was bombed by a fighter that took off from the Russian
military base in Armenia. The minister for his part assured the
ambassador that Armenian territory will never be used as a base for
launching military actions against Georgia. He expressed hope that
ways will be found to settle the conflict in Georgia.

SERZH SARGSYAN VISITS ARMENIAN EMBASSY IN BEIJING TO TAKE PART IN ARMENIA DAY

ARMENPRESS
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 12, ARMENPRESS: Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
visited the Armenian embassy in Beijing, China, on August 11, to take
part in a reception, organized as part of Armenia Day.

This news was reported to Armenpress by the presidential press service.