| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Making Russia Lose Its Vote
// PACE session discussing sanctions against Moscow
Yesterday a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe opened in Strasbourg. The meeting is going to focus on Georgia mainly. Against the Russian delegation’s expectations, the idea to deny Moscow the vote has not been buried – the voting on the matter is planned for tomorrow. Speaking at PACE yesterday, Mikhail Kasyanov called on Europeans to vote for it. However, according to the information of Kommersant, the status of the Russian delegation is unlikely to be overhauled, at least till January. Yesterday a report of the PACE Commission investigating the war in Georgia and South Ossetia was published. Head of the Commission Luc van den Brande accused both parties of war crimes, and Russia – of turning a blind eye to looting and ethnic cleansing.
The first result
“Europe recently experienced the biggest shock since the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” Lluis Maria de Puig said at the beginning of yesterday’s meeting. But the delegates hardly needed explanations of that kind – no one minded excluding almost all planned issues from the agenda. From now to Thursday the Assembly members from all European countries will be discussing the war in Georgia.
Yesterday the PACE delegates received a report prepared by the commission which visited Moscow, Tbilisi and Tskhinvali and tried to sort out what happened. The author of the report is Belgium’s Luc van den Brande, head of the PACE Commission and speaker on Russia.
At the beginning of the document the authors state that it is hard to determine who started hostilities. It is impossible find it out because the two parties submitted controversial data. That is why the Commission decided to consider the consequences mostly. The Commission’s major conclusion is that both parties committed war crimes during the military operation, namely they used prohibited weapons and indiscriminate force without trying to avoid victims among civilians. Moreover, Luc van den Brande blamed Russia for turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansings in Georgian villages on the territory of South Ossetia. He regards the fact of ethnic cleansings as obvious because almost all residents of Georgian villages in South Ossetia have been expelled, many villages were raised to the ground, sometimes even with bulldozers. The overall amount of Georgian refugees totaled 130,000, PACE reported.
The authors of the report wrote that during the war Russia was to bear full responsibility for what was happening in the territories it controlled. But Russian military did nothing to counter looting. According to the PACE Commission, looting began after the ceasefire was announced on August 12 and continues to date. Luc van den Brande specified that, unlike South Ossetian soldiers and volunteers from the North Caucasus, Russian military are not accused of looting.
Debate over the report is planned for today. Answering a question of Kommersant how the parties accused of war crimes should be punished, Luc van den Brande said that so far it is too early too consider means of punishment given that looting continues – the problem should be first resolved. Besides, he added that he is not in favor of the idea to deny the delegations of the conflict parties the vote. In his view, now is not the right time.
With vote or without it
The matter of denying the Russian delegation the vote caused a scandal yesterday. Prior to the opening of the session, its governing body – the Bureau, which includes the heads of all national delegations and political factions of the Assembly, – convened. The Russian delegation attempted to exclude the proposal of 24 delegates headed by Estonia’s Kristiina Ojuland to deny Russia the vote in PACE. The Bureau agreed that it would be absurd to deny Russia the vote before starting to discuss the war in Georgia. In this case the Russian delegation would leave the hall in protest, and it would be pointless to discuss war without it. But the problem is the Bureau didn’t know how to reverse the petition of the 24, which had been filed already.
The Russian delegation found a way out. According to PACE rules, to be included in the agenda, a proposal must be signed by 20 Assembly members at least. That is why little was required to exclude the issue of denying Russia the vote from the agenda – to persuade the rest five people to disavow their signatures under the document.
The Russian delegation was supported even by its ardent opponent on Georgia Mátyás Eörsi. According to the information of Kommersant, he said that Russia should be denied the vote during the next session in January, but not now. That is why he was the first to disavow his signature.
Within an hour the number of those following Mr Eörsi reached four, and the Russian delegation’s headache seemed to have vanished. But, unexpectedly, Lluis Maria de Puig consulted the head of the Regulations Committee and found out that, according to PACE rules, you can’t disavow your signature. “Your votes do not belong to you any longer,” Lluis Maria de Puig noted philosophically and announced that the initiative to deny Russia is still on the agenda and voting will be held on Thursday night.
It was hard to choose a more unsuitable time for the Russian delegation. It is on Thursday that the debate on the Russia-Georgian war will be over, and, in theory, nothing will prevent the delegates from overhauling the Russian delegation’s status – its further presence at the session won’t be necessary any longer.
The abrupt change caused the indignation of the Russian delegation’s most reliable allies – Britain’s Michael Hancock and David Wilshire. They demanded to put the question to a vote immediately and to let the five MPs disavow their signatures. But Lluis Maria de Puig was firm. “I took a decision,” he said.
The confusion of the Russian delegation lasted for some ten minutes. But the delegation’s head Konstantin Kosachev managed to find a way out. He remembered that if the procedure of denying a delegation the vote has been under way, 24 hours are given to prepare a report on it. So, voting on Thursday is not sound at all – it can be carried out on Wednesday. Chairman de Puig agreed. So, the voting on Thursday was avoided.
“In fact, we ran no risk. I am sure that those in favor of overhauling the Russian delegation’s status have no chance,” Mr Kosachev told Kommersant later. “I just didn’t want the situation to drag on. I wanted to resolve the matter as soon as possible.”
Mr Kosachev confessed that the PACE chairman’s decision to introduce the petition for consideration was surprising to him. “I would not say we had a kind of agreement and they let us down. The whole PACE leadership had a general idea that it was unnecessary. Still, the chairman behaved like a bureaucrat,” he said.
It is already known that Switzerland’s Andreas Gross, a former speaker on Chechnya, who lashed out at Moscow, will deliver a report on overhauling the authority of the Russian delegation to PACE. But Konstantin Kosachev assured Kommersant that Mr Gross doesn’t find it necessary to deny Russia the vote as well.
For and against
However, not all those who spoke at the Council of Europe yesterday were against the idea of denying the Russian delegation the vote. For example, Mikhail Kasyanov agitated for that measure. He came to Strasburg to file a suit to the European Court on Human Rights. Also, he came because the liberal democratic faction of PACE invited him. He called the recent war “Russia’s aggression”, and overhauling the authority of the Russian delegation “a straight-forward and logical consequence of war”. He called the issue of denying Russia the vote a “test for Europe”: whether it will be able to show the Russian opposition that it supports its struggle.
“What is the essence of the relations between Russia and Europe, namely, PACE?” he asked. “They used to consider that Europe sends Russia a message. But now it is obvious that the Russian government is unable to get any messages. The Russian delegation to PACE should be denied the vote because it is here for imitation only. No one of its members has access to power or real power leverages. All they are allowed to do is wave their hands at the leadership, standing in the crowd. They are not politicians, they just want everyone else to believe they have authority. It is all because there is no legitimate parliament in Russia.”
Answering a question of Ukrainian journalists, Mikhail Kasyanov called on Ukraine to join NATO in order to defend itself from Russia. He also recommended that Europeans should understand that in 2003 Russians took a different track opting for self-isolation.
Nevertheless, the voice of Russia’s defenders may sound far louder today. Given that the current Russian delegation includes many of Russia’s heavyweights (Gennady Zyuganov, Sergey Markov, Svetlana Goryacheva and others), they expect “reinforcement” – a delegation of the Public Chamber of Russia, which will bring a collection of photos made in South Ossetia.
Besides, you could see a picket in front of the Palace of Europe yesterday. In fact, people have got accustomed to manifestations – usually Chechens or advocates of Tibet’s liberty rally there. But yesterday the strategic patch of land was occupied by the Abkhaz Diaspora of France and Germany. They waved flags holding banners that read “Saakashvili — killer, USA — his owner” and “Russia — life, Georgia — death”. The organizers of the protest action from a Russia-based organization “Ossetia accuses” handed out passers-by black baseball caps with the inscription “No genocide”. Before the session started, Russian MP from the United Russia party Arsen Fadzayev came out to the protesters, saying “Working? That’s right.”
The protesters promise they will stand in front of the Council of Europe all week long.
Mikhail Zygar, Strasburg
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 30, 2008
|
|
|
