Author: Maghakian Mike

Houston Chronicle, TX
Aug 24 2008

Give Russia respect it’s due

Viewed through Moscow’s eyes, the West’s response to Georgia looks
hypocritical. Remember Kosovo? Russia does

By GALE STOKES Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Western political leaders have reacted with outrage attoward the
Russian incursion into Georgia. But there is another way of looking at
the situation, especially if we compare Western policies toward Kosovo
and Russian actions in Georgia.

>From the Russian point of view, Europe and the United States first
militarily attacked Russia’s ally Serbia on behalf of breakaway
Kosovo, and then helped the Kosovars obtain their current state of
independence. ButAnd yet, when Russia intervenes in South Ossetia to
establish that breakaway region’s independence from Western oriented
Georgia, the United States and Europe react with shock and anger. In
Russian eyes, the position of the United States seems to be that
intervention is OK when we do it, but not when you do it.

The tensions surrounding these events are greatly increased by
America’s recent agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland to
place missile monitoring radars in those countries. Despite
protestations by the United States that its intentions are purely
defensive, one only needs to consider what any American government’s
reaction would be to the placement of Russian radars in Mexico to
defend against a rogue Latin American state in order to grasp why the
installations make the Russians nervous.

During the decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States did not take Russia seriously. Even today, we continue to
chastise the Russians for human rights abuses, for "misusing" their
oil and gas resources for political purposes and for obstructing our
wishes in various international venues.

What did we expect? That a great country with an educated work force
just starting to feel its economic oats would be content to play
second fiddle forever? It was just a matter of time before the
Russians reappeared as a strong state on the international scene. They
have now arrived, and it is in everyone’s interest if we begin to deal
with them like the great power they are.

Indeed, European stability demands a stable relationship between
Russia and the West. Punishing Russia for its incursion into South
Ossetia by dropping it from G-8, for example, would only undermine
stability.

There is a reasonable solution to the situation, however. Both
Ossetians and Abkhazians, just like Kosovars, see no other solution to
their political desires than independence, as they have shown in
repeated (if flawed) referenda and elections. Ossetians constitute
about two-thirds of the population of that region, with most of the
rest being Russians. Abkhazians make up about the same proportion of
Abkhazia, with most of the rest being Georgians. In other words, if
the ethnic principle works in Kosovo (as it seems to have worked in
France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, etc.) why not in these regions?

In fact, one of the primary threads of European history since 1850 has
been the redrawing of state borders along ethnic lines. Georgia’s
position on the matter is much like Serbia’s on Kosovo ‘ Georgians do
not want to live in these areas, which are not particularly viable
economically, but the government of Georgia cannot conceive of "giving
up" territory, despite its inability to exercise its rule there. But
just as stability will come to the Balkans as the Kosovo settlement
becomes increasingly integrated into European structures, so the
independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia would help with the
stabilization process in the Caucasus.

Such an outcome would not end ethnic strife there. Azeris and
Armenians have been talking lately under Russian auspices, but
relations remain fraught. And there is always the question of
Chechnya. But agreement on South Ossetia and Abkhazia would be a step
in the right direction.

What are the outlines of a solution? However it might be presented in
diplomatic language, it is basically this: the West accepts the
independence of the two regions including Russian "peacekeepers"; and
the Russians accept the independence of Kosovo, including a NATO and
EULEX (European Rule of Law Mission) presence. The two entities enter
the United Nations and Russia stops vetoing the Kosovo solution in the
Security Council.

The beneficiaries? Improved US/EU-Russian relations, increased
stability in the Balkans and the Caucasus, and a resolution that the
majority populations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia appear to want.

al/outlook/5962082.html

Xinhua, China
Aug 23 2008

German chancellor proposes "neighborhood conference" for Georgia

2008-08-24 04:25:24

BERLIN, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has
proposed that European Union (EU) presidency France organize a
"neighborhood conference" to resolve economic difficulties for
Georgia, German government spokesman Thomas Steg said on Saturday.

"This is solely a conference aimed at supporting and strengthening
Georgia in economic terms," Steg was quoted as saying by German news
agency DPA.

The spokesman said the Caucasus Summit, or "neighborhood
conference" in the EU’s jargon, is not a conference "aimed at finding
a political solution to the conflict."

Apart from EU member states, Merkel proposed that countries
neighboring Georgia like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan should
be invited to participate in the meeting.

The proposal had been forwarded to France, which currently holds
the rotating presidency of the EU, and it is up to France to decide.

On Monday, Merkel is to start a tour of Sweden and the Baltic
states, aiming to seek common EU response to the Georgia crisis.

ROBERT FISK’S WORLD: A VOICE RECOVERED FROM ARMENIA’S BITTER PAST

Independent.co.uk
Saturday, 23 August 2008

It’s a tiny book, only 116 pages long, but it contains a monumental
truth, another sign that one and a half million dead Armenians will
not go away.

It’s called My Grandmother: a Memoir and it’s written by Fethiye Cetin
and it opens up graves. For when she was growing up in the Turkish
town of Marden, Fethiye’s grandmother Seher was known as a respected
Muslim housewife. It wasn’t true. She was a Christian Armenian and
her real name was Heranus. We all know that the modern Turkish state
will not acknowledge the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, but this humble
book may help to change that.

Because an estimated two million Turks – alive in Turkey today –
had an Armenian grandparent.

As children they were put on the death marches south to the Syrian
desert but – kidnapped by brigands, sheltered by brave Muslim villagers
(whose own courage also, of course, cannot be acknowledged by Turkey)
or simply torn from their dying mothers – later became citizens of
the modern Turkey which Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was to set up. Yet as
Maureen Freely states in her excellent preface, four generations
of Turkish schoolchildren simply do not know Ottoman Anatolia was
between a quarter and a half Christian.

Heranus – whose face stares out at the reader from beneath her
Muslim he adscarf – was seized by a Turkish gendarme, who sped
off on horseback after lashing her mother with a whip. Even when
she died of old age, Fethiye tried to record the names of Heranus’s
Armenian parents – Isguhi and Hovannes – but was ignored by the mosque
authorities. It was Heranus, with her razor-sharp memory, who taught
Fethiye of her family’s fate and this book does record in terrible
detail the now familiar saga of mass cruelty, of rape and butchery.

In one town, the Turkish police separated husbands, sons and old men
from their families and locked the women and children into a courtyard
with high walls. From outside came blood-curdling shrieks. As Fethiye
records, "Heranus and her brothers clung to their mother’s skirts,
but though she was terrified, she was desperate to know what was going
on. Seeing that another girl had climbed on to someone’s shoulders to
see over the wall, she went to her side. The girl was still looking
over the wall; when, after a very long while, she came down again,
she said what she had seen. All her life, Heranus would never forget
what came from this girl’s lip: ‘They’re cutting the men’s throats,
and throwing them into the river.’"

Fethiye says she wrote her grandmother’s story to "reconcile us
with our history; but also to reconcile us with ourselves" which,
as Freely writes, cuts right through the bitter politics of genocide
recognition and=2 0denial. Of course, Ataturk’s decision to move
from Arabic to Latin script also means that vital Ottoman documents
recalling the genocide cannot be consulted by most modern-day Turks. At
about the same time, it’s interesting to note, Stalin was performing
a similarly cultural murder in Tajikistan where he moved the largely
Persian language from Arabic to Cyrillic.

And so history faded away. And I am indebted to Cosette Avakian,
who sent me Fethiye’s book and who is herself the granddaughter of
Armenian survivors and who brings me news of another memorial of
Armenians, this time in Wales.

Wales, you may ask? And when I add that this particular memorial –
a handsome Armenian cross embedded in stone – was vandalised on
Holocaust Memorial Day last January, you may also be amazed. And
I’m not surprised because not a single national paper reported this
outrage. Had it been a Jewish Holocaust memorial stone that was
desecrated, it would – quite rightly – have been recorded in our
national newspapers. But Armenians don’t count.

As a Welsh Armenian said on the day, "This is our holiest
shrine. Our grandparents who perished in the genocide do not have
marked graves. This is where we remember them." No one knows who
destroyed the stone: a request for condemnation by the Turkish embassy
in London went, of course, unheeded, while in Liverpool on Holocaust
Day, the Armenians were not even mentioned in20the service.

Can this never end? Fethiye’s wonderful book may reopen the past,
but it is a bleak moment to record that when the Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink was prosecuted for insulting "Turkishness",
Fethiye defended him in court. Little good it did Dink. He was murdered
in January last year, his alleged killer later posing arrogantly for
a picture next to the two policemen who were supposed to be holding
him prisoner. It was in Dink’s newspaper Agos that Fethiye was to
publish her grandmother’s death notice.

This was how Heranus’s Armenian sister in America came to read of
her death.

For Heranus’s mother survived the death marches to remarry and live
in New York.

Wales, the United States, even Ethiopia, where Cosette Avakian’s
family eventually settled, it seems that every nation in the world
is home to the Armenians. But can Turkey ever be reconciled with
its own Armenian community, which was Hrant Dink’s aim? When Fethiye
found her Aunt Marge in the US – this was Heranus’ sister, of course,
by her mother’s second marriage – she tried to remember a song that
Heranus sang as a child. It began with the words "A sad shepherd on
the mountain/Played a song of love…" and Marge eventually found
two Armenian church choir members who could put the words together.

"My mother never missed the village dances," Marge remembered. "She
loved to dance. But after her ordeal, she never danced a gain." And
now even when the Welsh memorial stone that stands for her pain and
sorrow was smashed, the British Government could not bring itself to
comment. As a member of the Welsh Armenian community said at the time,
"We shall repair the cross again and again, no matter how often it
is desecrated." And who, I wonder, will be wielding the hammer to
smash it next time?

MAX AND TAX BODIES UNITED AGAIN

armradio.am
21.08.2008 16:00

According to the commandment of RA President Serzh Sargsyan the state
max committee and state tax committees united and were renamed state
incomes committee.

According to the max legislation book the ruler of the max and tax
bodies is the President of incomes committee.

The RA Government must accept legal acts of this agreement till
January 1 2009.

The RA President discharged Vahram Barsekhyan, who was the head of
tax committee. With the same edict the RA President Serzh Sargsyan
pointed Gagik Xachatryan in the position of the President of the
state incomes committee.

POLICE ARREST NSS OFFICER

ARMENPRESS
Aug 20, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 20, ARMENPRESS: Armenian police said its operatives
revealed during an August 19 ‘comparative’ study at Zvartnots airport
that Vahe M., 31, a senior inspector of the National Security Service
(NSS) at the border troops check point at the airport, failed to report
after revealing false data in a passenger’s passport flying to Vienna.

The police said in return Vahe M. received 400 British pounds. The
police said also an investigation was launched into this case.

THEY DO NOT WANT TO STAND OFF
by Anna Hakobyan

Haykakan Zhamanak
Aug 5 2008
Armenia

It became known yesterday [on 4 August] that the US Senate approved the
candidacy of Marie Yovanovitch for the office of the US ambassador to
Armenia. We have numerously said in the past the Armenian-US relations
were not at their height due to absence of an ambassador to Armenia
and this could not but have had an impact on the quality of relations
in general. However, the US administration seemed not to spare place
for Armenia and did not engage seriously in the issue of having a
plenipotentiary ambassador to Armenia. The [former] ambassador to
Armenia, John Evans, was recalled with the official interpretation
that he had expressed an opinion contradicting the official opinion
of the US administration and made a statement recognizing the Armenian
genocide.

[Passage omitted: reference to candidacy of Richard Hoagland to the
post of the US ambassador to Armenia]

It is noteworthy that Yovanovitch like Richard Hoagland did not
describe "the events" of the 1915 a genocide.

[Passage omitted: description of Yovanovitch’s formulation of the
Armenian Genocide, which contained the word "genocide", but said it
is used by the Armenians]

Armenian lobby dissatisfied

Naturally, this response could not content the Armenian lobby and
the senators influenced by it. However, this did not at all hinder
the approval of Yovanovitch’s candidacy, and Senator Robert Menendez,
who became a great hero of the Armenian community in the USA, did not
veto her candidacy, as he did two times in Hoagland’s case. Meanwhile,
Hoagland’s and Yovanovitch’s responses are not different in any way –
the Armenian "Medz Yeghern" [Armenian phrase meaning "great genocide"]
expression could not have satisfied the senators, who had demanded
that candidates for the ambassador call the massacres of 1915 a
"genocide". This means that the USA has not had an ambassador to
Armenia for two years not because John Evans pronounced the word
"genocide", and Richard Hoagland did not pronounce this word, and,
moreover, not because the Armenian lobby in the USA and some senators
did not like Richard Hoagland, but only because the US administration
just did not need it.

Time to have an ambassador

Why it was not needed is a separate issue, but a fact remains a fact
that the candidacy of the ambassador has been approved now, which
means, in turn, that a necessity to have an ambassador in Armenia
has emerged finally. This cannot but be directly connected with the
political situation in Armenia.

At the time, when the USA did not have an ambassador and the US
administration did not make special efforts to achieve the opposite
two national elections were rigged in Armenia – the [May 2007]
parliamentary and the [February 2008] presidential, and the 1 March
events [disturbances with casualties] followed the presidential
election.

At present, an autumn of turbulent political developments and
changes is expected in Armenia. And by strange coincidence, the new
US ambassador to Armenia will start her active work in autumn. It
does not follow at all from the abovementioned that Yovanovitch’s
coming or not coming to Armenia will anyway influence the course of
developments expected in Armenia. Not at all, this is most likely the
case when the US government just does not want to miss what is going
on – upon necessity, why not, also spreading news that it happened
with the US support and participation.

It is not incidental that a week prior to Yovanovitch’s appointment,
she was characterized as a specialist of "coloured revolutions" in
the Azerbaijani press. On the other hand, Russia apparently supports
Armenia’s [opposition] Popular Movement and is entirely loyal to
the Armenia government, which is breathing its last breath. No
matter how strange it is, the PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe], which decided to give Armenia time till January
[prolonging the term of its resolution, which recommends democratic
reforms in Armenia], unexpectedly tightened its position – speaking
about a deadline in September. It turns out that all of them do not
want to stand off the expected political developments in Armenia,
and when activity and participants emerge around a matter, it means
that the result is near.

Might makes right
Breakaway movements such as South Ossetia’s and Kosovo’s tend to become
proxies for the great powers.
By Tim Judah

LAT
August 17, 2008

Afew months ago, I traveled to Sukhumi, a balmy, war-wrecked seaside
resort that is the capital of Abkhazia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as
anyone who has followed the news of the last week cannot fail to know,
are the two breakaway regions of Georgia. In pelting rain, I crossed
the Inguri River from Georgia proper into Abkhazia and noticed that the
Georgians had erected a giant sculpture on their side. It was of a
pistol pointing at Abkhazia, but the barrel of the gun had been tied in
a knot.

Even before the guns started firing 10 days ago, this gesture of peace
and conciliation was a pretty futile one. Indeed, when I visited, there
seemed no hope of a peaceful resolution to these two disputes, nor to
two others that have dogged the Caucasus since the early 1990s. These
are Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian-controlled enclave that is
technically within Azerbaijan, and Transnistria, the breakaway part of
Moldova.

The roots of these conflicts run deep, and they are nothing peculiar to
the post-Soviet space. The battles may go into remission, or a long
"frozen conflict" phase, but even with the best goodwill in the world,
they may never be resolved peacefully. Breakaways also tend to become
the playthings of the great powers, which find them convenient as
proxies in bigger conflicts. This has been the fate of South Ossetia
and Abkhazia, which are useful to Russia to destabilize Georgia, and
was the U.S.-cast role of Iraqi Kurdistan before the fall of Saddam
Hussein.

That just compounds the near-impossibility of finding any resolution.
For example, attempts to peacefully solve the Gordian knot that is
Cyprus have failed miserably. After decades of U.N. resolutions, plans
and referendums, the Greek and Turkish Cypriots seem no closer to
reunification on their little island. Croatia, by contrast, solved its
problem with the breakaway Serbs in the state of Krajina in 1995 with a
massive, U.S.-encouraged armed assault. Virtually all of Krajina’s
Serbian population of 200,000 fled. Few returned.

Perhaps the Croatian example is what Georgian President Mikheil
Saakashvili was hoping to emulate when he launched his attack on South
Ossetia, which then went so dreadfully wrong for him.

In Sukhumi, I met Stanislav Lakoba, the man in charge of security, who
might have warned Saakashvili of what awaited him. Lakoba scoffed when
I suggested that Georgia was pouring millions into its armed forces and
might one day attack. That, he said, would be "suicide." Clearly, he
knew what he was talking about.

In the Abkhaz Foreign Ministry, the flags of Abkhazia, South Ossetia
and Transnistria stood next to one another. Their leaders had just been
meeting.

Alongside their banners was that of Russia.

Without Moscow’s support, none of the breakaways could survive. Quite
apart from the military protection that Russia gives them, they use the
ruble, speak more Russian than their own languages, and Russia has
distributed passports to their people. But Russia is in a curious
situation. It had, until now, claimed to support the territorial
integrity of states. On Thursday, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign
minister, did a volte face. The world, he said, in a dramatic change of
position, "can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial
integrity."

This was surely received as good news in Abkhazia and South Ossetia —
but Russia should remember that the breakaways have their own agendas.
Ossetian officials whom I met in their capital, Tskhinvali, dream of a
union with their kin in North Ossetia, which was left within Russia in
the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Whether this would be as part of
Russia or as an independent Greater Ossetia remains to be seen. This
might seem fanciful now, but who knows what will happen to Russia in
the future? Chechnya has, after all, already tried to break away. One
day, it probably will try again.

Meanwhile, the Abkhaz just want to be left alone. When the Soviet Union
split apart, they were a mere 18% of the population of Abkhazia. Now,
although very much in control, they are still only 45% of its
approximately 200,000 people, the rest being Georgians who live in the
south, Armenians and some others. Hundreds of thousands of Georgians
who fled in the early 1990s would like to come home, but the Abkhaz
resist, fearing that once again they would become an insignificant
minority in their own homeland.

They don’t shout this from the rooftops, but the Abkhaz — unlike the
Ossetians — distrust the Russians. The Russian czarist invasions of
the 19th century sent huge numbers of their people into exile in
Turkey. They faced wholesale deportations to Siberia under Stalin, who
resettled Georgians to Abkhazia, sowing the seeds of the conflicts we
are reaping today.

International law is not much help in sorting out what should happen
with breakaways either. Ask an international lawyer, or someone who
supports one breakaway case or another, and soon it is clear: Two
principles — self-determination and the right of a nation to its
territorial integrity — stand in conflict. Court rulings on them
cannot be enforced anyway. In 1975, the International Court of Justice
ruled that the people of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara,
which had been occupied by Morocco in the same year, had the right to
self-determination. They are still waiting to exercise that right,
still occupied by Morocco.

The situation with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia on
Feb. 17, is similar to the current one, especially from the point of
view of international law. Kosovo was a province within Serbia in the
old Yugoslavia, just as Abkhazia and South Ossetia were autonomous
parts of Soviet Georgia. So, argues Serbia (with the support of
Russia), the "provincial" Kosovars should not have the same right of
self-determination as the old Yugoslav or Soviet republics.

But the Kosovars (90% of whom are now ethnic Albanians), like the
Ossetians and Abkhaz, assert that they have the right to rule
themselves. Serbia conquered Kosovo in 1912. But when regions were
reshuffled after World War II, no one asked the Kosovo Albanians if
they wanted once again to be part of Serbia and Yugoslavia. Clearly,
they would have said that they did not.

The U.S. backed the right of the Albanians to self-determination and in
1999 led NATO in a 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia during the
Kosovo war.

In Georgia, however, the politics of Kosovo have been turned on their
head. The U.S. supports Georgia’s territorial integrity while Russia
bombs it on behalf of separatists. And Russia is mustering the same
arguments in support of Abkhaz separatists as the U.S. did in support
of an independent Kosovo.

Some editorialists have argued that Kosovo’s independence has set a
precedent that Moscow is now following. They seem to me to be obscuring
the point and confusing the issue for ordinary readers. The simple
truth is that whatever the rules, the (contested) laws and indeed the
rights or wrongs of the issue, might makes right.

Indeed, Bosko Jaksic, a Serbian commentator writing in the daily
Politika on Aug. 11, has it exactly to the point. "It is high time we
finally understood that the mighty do as they please and the small do
as they must." Politicians, he says, "can continue their debate as to
whether Kosovo has set a precedent or not, but it turns out that
realpolitik has its own rules." That may be a shame but, as the events
of the last 10 days have shown, it also is starkly true.

Tim Judah covers the Balkans for the Economist. He is the author of
"The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia" and the
forthcoming "Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know."

Saakashvili’s rescue operation

23:08 | 15/ 08/ 2008

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin) – It took
the United States a week to understand the damage Mikheil Saakashvili’s
"Ossetian blitzkrieg" has caused him, and its fosterling, the Rose
Democracy.

Now Washington has launched an operation to rescue Saakasvili in real
earnest. At the same time, a diplomatic battle is unfolding around the
Caucasian knot. Regrettably, this struggle will be harder for Russia to
win than any armed conflict. On August 14, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice arrived in Paris to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy,
and immediately left for Tbilisi to talk with Saakashvili. At the same
time, President George W. Bush sanctioned humanitarian relief to
Georgia. The first S-17 cargo planes have already delivered medicines
and food there. Several U.S. warships are moving to Georgian shores
from the Persian Gulf to prevent Russia from blocking relief aid.

The Pentagon’s humanitarian relief effort has little to do with
Georgia’s real requirements. But this is the first action in support of
Saakashvili. He did not receive such support in the first days after
the attack, and even began to complain that Washington’s initial
criticisms of Moscow’s role in the conflict were too mild. This was not
what he expected from those who had pushed him to attack South Ossetia.

Now Bush has accused Russia of "not behaving like the kind of
international partner that it has said it wants to be." The fact that
Washington has only lashed out at Moscow a week after the event is
telling. Usually, the Americans provide thorough propaganda support for
their political or military actions in any part of the globe (the
invasions of Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq are all
good examples), and do this preemptively. The flow of inspired leaks
and revelations from anonymous high-rankers usually mounts for weeks
before the decisive blow.

But it did not happen with Georgia. In fact, the U.S. press carried
post factum "confidential" reports that during her visit to Tbilisi
over a month ago Rice warned Saakashvili against military action. But
he either did not get it, or lost his temper, and decided to act at his
own risk. Sometimes pocket rulers get out of hand.

Yet it is hard to believe that a stateswoman as formidable as "Teflon
Condi" could not make it clear to Saakashvili what the White House
wants or does not want him to do. And he is not an Angela Merkel or
Silvio Berlusconi, who can easily afford not to listen to the U.S.
secretary of state.

The White House’s recent moves suggest it has overcome the initial
shock and has embarked on what it calls "damage control" by using the
only remaining option – aggressive diplomacy. These moves also point to
its blunder in anticipating Moscow’s reaction to Saakashvili’s action.
Washington clearly did not expect such a prompt and forceful response
from Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, still less so on the first day
of the Olympics.

The Olympics are also a key to understanding what happened. After the
boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics (after the introduction of Soviet
troops into Afghanistan), U.S. leaders became confident that all Soviet
leaders were obsessed with the Olympic Games (which was true), and that
it was easier for them to arrest several hundred dissidents than be
subjected to a denigrating boycott. It is no accident that one of the
possible responses being floated by Western diplomats is a boycott of
the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a measure designed to cut "the
aggressive Russia" down to size.

That would certainly be unpleasant, but it is not very likely. Too much
may change in the next six years. The Bush administration will be gone,
for one thing. Incidentally, despite all his outspoken criticism of
Russia’s "invasion of Georgia," Republican presidential nominee John
McCain said on August 14 that as president he "would not send American
military forces into a conflict in Georgia."

Like Washington, London never misses a chance to step on the Kremlin’s
toes. Together they want to give a tough response to Moscow, and choose
those sanctions that would "hit hardest at its prestige," as The Times
put it. Apart from the Olympic boycott, Washington has suggested a
whole package of measures against Russia, including blocking its entry
to the WTO, denying it admission to the Organization of Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), excluding it from the G8, stopping
the talks on a new strategic partnership agreement with the EU, and
curtailing its Partnership for Peace with NATO.

NATO is to adopt a common position next week, when its foreign
ministers will gather for an urgent meeting in Brussels at Bush’s
request. The meeting will take place on Monday or Tuesday (August 18 or
August 19). The worst-case scenario for Russia is that Washington may
persuade the Europeans to welcome Tbilisi and Kiev to the Membership
Action Plan without delay, a proposal France, Italy and Germany
rejected at NATO’s April summit in Bucharest. The Kremlin will be
hoping they will choose to disagree again.

As for the new partnership agreement with the EU, Moscow has no reason
to rush it. Russia is quite content with its current status, and Europe
needs the agreement more than we do. Western business is much more
interested in Russia’s WTO entry, because it wants to establish itself
firmly here. The OECD is more of a club of economic projects of its 30
members, and we are not rushing there, either. NATO-Russia partnership
has long become a fiction.

Ousting Russia from the G8 looks like a tough measure, but it is not
really. The G8 long ago lost its original essence, and has turned into
little more than an expensive talking shop. If it is to regain its
relevance its format must be changed. It is strange that Canada is a
member of this club, but such huge economies as China, India, or Brazil
are not. Nor does it include a single African nation. It has been clear
since the end of the past century that this is inadequate. If Russia
leaves this club, it will simply cease to exist.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not
necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

MIKHEIL SAHAKASHVILI TO BE TRIED IN TBILISI BUT NOT IN HAGUE, ARMENIAN POLITICAL EXPERT THINKS

arminfo
2008-08-15 12:19:00

Arminfo. Mikheil Sahakashvili should be tried in Tbilisi but not
in Hague, Armenian political expert Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan told
ArmInfo correspondent. ‘Even if Georgian president finds himself in
Hague, he will be justified as the marionette court of Hague is for
such persons like Radovan Karadchich and Slobodan Miloshevich. Honest
people are tried there for the crimes which were not committed by
them’, – he said.

He also added that Sahakshvili should be tried by the Georgian people
in Tbilisi, as sooner or later Georgian people should understand that
he took Georgia in chaos.

‘I think that the people of Georgia will be wisdom enough to condemn
and punish the criminal president’, – Melik-Shaknazaryan concluded.

CORNELL SCHOLARS: GEORGIA DISPUTE MORE THAN A FIGHT OVER LAND
By Liz Lawyer

Press & Sun-Bulletin
August 14, 2008
NY

The conflict between Georgia and Russia over the disputed territory
of South Ossetia is more complicated than a simple sovereignty dispute.

Georgia’s placement of troops in the region could be a violation
of Russia’s rights or an action of self-defense, said Sarah Kreps,
an assistant professor in Cornell’s government department. The West
may see Russia’s reaction as overly forceful, but to a Russian it
probably looks like a simple assertion of its resurgent national pride,
Kreps said.

"To say this was caused by Georgia sending in troops over-simplifies
the matter," she said. "It’s really a multi-faceted situation."

As Russia’s economic clout has slowly grown, the country is now
matching it with military strength, Kreps said. It’s part of the
Russians’ regenerating power, and Kreps said she wouldn’t be surprised
to see the country’s leaders asserting it in other areas, politically
and geographically.

As a former Soviet republic, Georgia has a history of pro-Russian
leanings. However, Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has
built his platform around pro-Western philosophy and has sent troops
to Iraq. Until the conflict with Russia required Georgia, a country
a little smaller than South Carolina, to call the troops home, the
Georgian military had the third-largest international troop presence
in Iraq, after the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Added to the growing tension between Georgia and Russia is a divided
populace in South Ossetia: Some are for unification with Russia, others
for Georgia, and others feel it should be politically independent of
both Georgia and Russia, said Irakli Kakabadze, a Cornell visiting
scholar who is from Tbilisi, Georgia.

"These tensions and this rhetoric have been simmering over the last
couple years," Kreps said. "(The Russians) really feel humiliated by
what happened in the ’90s. I think these last few days have seemed
shockingly like something that would have played out during the
Cold War."

The similarity to a Cold War proxy war is very close, Kakabadze said.

"I would say right now it is definitely a proxy war between the
ultra-right-wing politicians in each country," he said.

Kakabadze said more than two centuries of Russian domination has left
the Georgians fearful of being drawn into that system again. The main
conflict isn’t about South Ossetia, he said, though it is important
to many in his country.

"I think it is about many issues," he said.

The U.S. trying to include Georgia and Ukraine in NATO is reason
number one, he said. Another reason is an oil pipeline running through
Azerbaijan, Georgia’s neighbor to the southeast.

Kreps said Saakashvili’s pro-Western stance hasn’t endeared him to
former Russian president and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin,
and there may even be a personal element in the rivalry between
Georgia and Russia.

But the bigger rivalry in the picture is the one between Russia
and the United States, she said. The Russian government sees the
Westernization of Georgia, including being considered for membership
in NATO, as threatening. Kreps said this looked like the United States
messing around in Russia’s backyard.

In Kakabadze’s estimation, the dispute over South Ossetia is a pretext
for an attempt by Russia to dominate the Caucus region, which includes
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, he said.

"As you can imagine, it is a big, bloody mess," he said. "We hope
for a peaceful solution."

Kakabadze, who said he is a professional peace worker who worked in
Georgia as a conflict resolution specialist for many years, said he
personally supports a completely demilitarized zone in the Caucuses
as necessary to a lasting peace.