| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia Accuses Georgia of ‘New Hostilities’ |
| 2008-10-07 |
| KARALETI, 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. 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. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe 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 part of those responsible to work constructively,” she said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #7 Maybe we'd consider Ayers an "insurgent". |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-10-07 15:47 |
| #6 You're comparing the proverbial appples and oranges. Mr. Ayers, if I understand correctly, is a domestic terrorist, and engaged in violent acts against his own government. Also, if I understand correctly, the Russians invaded Georgia. Thus, if there are Georgians engaged in hostilities, however unwise and counter-productive, it is against a foreign force. Hence they could not exactly be classified as domestic terrorists, unless you consider Georgia to be part of Russia. And hence, my jibe. |
| Posted by: Milton Fandango 2008-10-07 15:39 |
| #5 Remember, Putin is everything the crazed left says about Bush. I wouldn't put it past him to send his wetwork men in to kill a few conscripts to A) undermine his uppity underling Medvedev and B) blacken the reputation of the Georgians. Did they ever find the terrorists who blew up those Russian apartment buildings in the run-up to the second Chechnyan war? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2008-10-07 15:33 |
| #4 Are they classified as terrorists if they're in their own country? Why don't you ask Bill Ayers? No---wait, you're an ethical moron. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-10-07 15:23 |
| #3 Are they classified as terrorists if they're in their own country? No wait - you're Russian. Never mind. I just answered my own question. |
| Posted by: Milton Fandango 2008-10-07 15:09 |
| #2 Sounds familiar:: int. observers (of some kind) in, terrs get out of their holes. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-10-07 13:49 |
| #1 The colder it becomes Putin and his KGB thugs will invent another excuse for re-invading Georgia, with the objective of seizing the energy pipeline crossing southern Georgia. |
| Posted by: Mark Espinola 2008-10-07 03:34 |