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You Won't Wipe That off Your Shoe
// The price of the question
The arrest of Russian officers by Georgian special services and the blockade of the Russian Army headquarters were not due to Tbilisi's serious concern over the detrimental activities of Russian intelligence and a desire to stop them. The stakes are higher than that.
The standoff between Moscow and Tbilisi that has been going on for more than one year now has been tense for a while already. But it has never been as serious as now. Since such tensions don't come out of nowhere, it means that someone has something to gain from them.
There is no mistaking the fact that it is Georgia that has been consciously heading into conflict with Moscow. First Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili accused Russia on the floor of the UN of a “bandit occupation” of Georgian land. Then it transferred the Abkhazian government in exile to the Kodor Gorge. And now they have arrested Russian officers.
It seems that Georgia doesn't like the current situation, with settlement of the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in a dragged out phase, any more. Such a situation may last indefinitely, and that means that Georgia will never see NATO membership, for which the absence of conflicts on the territory of the candidate state is requisite. So Tbilisi decided to speed up the process.
Russia has refrained from extreme reactions. Instead, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov promises to call on the UN Security Council, the OSCE and even NATO to deal with Georgia, and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov has declared, not without satisfaction, that Georgia's game is up.
But the game Georgia has engaged Russia in is probably not so primitive, and today only a part of that game is obvious.
Moscow's calling international organizations into the fray with Georgia may prove to be a double-edged sword. Those organizations will, of course, call on Georgia to exercise restraint and enter into negotiations with Russia. But they will also probably express concern over the unresolved conflicts on the territory of Georgia and insist on becoming involved in their expedited solution. Moscow, which jealously guards its position as chief peacekeeper of the CIS, will not like that.
And that is most likely Tbilisi's big game and its trap for Moscow.
They say they use a similar tactic when planting mines. One mine is found where the enemy will find it easily. And then he stumbles onto the well-hidden mine in his carefree self-satisfaction.
Gennady Sysoev
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 29, 2006
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