from the May 05, 2009 edition –
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Seeing Red: Georgia blames Russia for ‘mutiny’
Russia, furious over NATO war games set to begin Wednesday in Georgia,
says recent turmoil is evidence of Saakashvili’s instability. Armenia
withdraws from war games.
By Fred Weir and Correspondent
Moscow
It looked like a recipe for political crisis even before a Georgian
tank battalion apparently mutinied on Tuesday:
– Nearly a month of rolling street demonstrations have virtually shut
down the central area of the capital, with thousands of protesters
daily demanding the resignation of Georgia’s president, Mikheil
Saakashvili.
– Russian troops have been massing in the past week barely an hour’s
drive away in South Ossetia.
– NATO-sponsored war games that Moscow furiously opposes are set to
begin on Wednesday.
Then came the apparent mutiny Tuesday of Georgian soldiers – a
still-murky event that Mr. Saakashvili was quick to blame on a
pro-Russian conspiracy inside his country’s armed forces. Though
Georgian authorities announced that the situation had been brought
under control by Tuesday evening, and several former and current
military commanders are now under investigation for plotting the
alleged rebellion, people in Tbilisi say conditions remain tense.
Russian authorities, who angrily deny any involvement in the plot,
insist the turmoil underscores their longstanding claim that Georgia
is an unstable entity with an illegitimate leader that should not be
playing host to NATO forces. Relations between Moscow and NATO,
already at low ebb, appear set to plummet further after NATO grimly
announced that the month-long war games, which involve 1,300 troops
from 18 countries, will go ahead as planned.
"It’s hard to say what will come next," says Alexander Iskandaryan,
director of the independent Center for Caucasian Studies in Yerevan,
Armenia. "The Russian mood toward Georgia is strained, nervous and
irrational. The same can be said for Georgia’s attitude to
Russia. [Tuesday’s] events show there is a chaotic struggle for power
inside Georgia, and suggests that Saakashvili’s power is not secure."
Late Tuesday, Armenia announced it would be withdrawing from the NATO
military exercises. A statement released by the defense ministry of
the longtime Russian ally cited "the current situation" for its
decision, but offered no further explanation. Kazakhstan and Serbia,
also strong allies with Russia, have previously canceled their
participation.
Georgia, Moscow blame one another for mutiny
Georgia’s Interior Ministry says a 500-man tank battalion stationed at
Mukhrovani, about 18 miles from Tbilisi, mutinied on Tuesday in a bid
to disrupt the NATO war games. According to Shota Utiashvili, a
ministry spokesman, the plotters "were receiving money from Russia,
and [their actions] were coordinated with Russia." He adds that a
"full-scale mutiny" had been planned by the rebels, but was averted by
the authorities’ quick action.
In a televised statement, Saakashvili also blamed Moscow and added, "I
am asking and demanding from our northern neighbor to refrain from
provocations."
However, in a statement quoted by Georgian news agencies, the
rebellious battalion’s commander, Mamuka Gorgishvili, indicated that
his men were merely staging a sit-down strike to protest "the ongoing
[political] confrontation" between antigovernment demonstrators and
Saakashvili in the streets of Tbilisi. "There will be no aggressive
actions on behalf of our tank unit," the statement said. "We are in
barracks and we are not going to leave them."
Some Georgian opposition leaders say they doubt there was any military
mutiny.
"The authorities are in crisis and we fear Saakashvili might use this
situation to declare a state of emergency," says Irina
Sarishvili-Chanturia, leader of the "Hope" coalition of opposition
groups. After a month of rolling anti-government street rallies in
Tbilisi, she says, "Saakashvili wants an excuse to use force against
us, to make the population give up on the very idea of protesting."
No thaw in relations between Russia and NATO
Georgian experts offer differing assessments of their meaning.
"This is a continuation of what happened last August," when the
Russian army stormed into South Ossetia to defend the breakaway
Georgian statelet from an attempt to impose Tbilisi’s control by
military force, says Alexander Rondeli, president of the independent
Foundation for Strategic and Political Studies in Tbilisi. "Our
northern neighbor wants to destabilize Georgia, and you can’t say it’s
over or that things will become normal. Russia will never tolerate
Georgia’s independence."
But Georgi Khutsishvili, chair of the International Center on Conflict
and Negotiation in Tbilisi, says there are no "pro-Russian" forces,
either among the opposition in Tbilisi’s streets or within the
Georgian army. "Our authorities are always seeing Moscow’s hand in
things," he says. "But I cannot imagine that any Georgian army
battalion could revolt on Russian orders. I completely exclude
this. Whatever happened, it must be explained by internal factors."
Experts say the Kremlin appears increasingly concerned over the damage
to Russia’s fragile dialogue with NATO, begun with high hopes barely a
month ago. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week called on the
Western alliance to cancel the "shortsighted" war games, and ordered
Russian officials not to attend a NATO council meeting slated for
Thursday.
Making matters worse, NATO last week expelled two Russian diplomats
accused of espionage – one of them the son of Moscow’s ambassador to
the European Union – a move that drew angry Russian accusations that
the Western alliance was returning to cold war-style "gross
provocations."
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that he
will not attend a NATO summit in Brussels later this month, where he
was to have met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to protest
against the spying allegations.
And in another tension-building development, the Kremlin signed
security pacts last Thursday with the breakaway Georgian regions of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, enabling Russia’s FSB security service to
take control over the two statelets’ borders. Russian border guards,
who fall under command of the FSB, began taking up positions along the
disputed frontier this week, along with 1,800 fresh Russian
troops. Georgia’s foreign ministry denounced the moves as "yet another
Russian attempt to strengthen the military build-up on Georgia’s
occupied territories and legitimize the occupation process."
Russian officials insist they are not worried about any military
threat posed by the NATO-sponsored military exercises, which were
scheduled well before the August war, but feel offended by what they
see as a Western effort to bolster Saakashvili even after he
authorized the military attack on South Ossetia that killed a dozen
Russian peacekeeping troops.
"Western politicians are just closing their eyes to the instability in
Georgia, and they just can’t accept that Russia might be right about
anything," says Sergei Markov, a Duma deputy from the pro-Kremlin
United Russia Party.
"It looks to us like NATO just insists on recognizing the legitimacy
of Saakashvili, to treat him as if he were a normal politician who
behaves normally. It’s the position of NATO countries toward us,
rather than what’s going on in Georgia, that causes us the most
concern," he says.
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