Georgia Aims Missile at UN
// and steps up efforts to get South Ossetia back
Georgia has apparently decided to use the ongoing missile row with Russia to speed up talks on the status of South Ossetia. The country’s Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli promised that a Georgian task force would present its final recommendations on the status of the breakaway republic in two weeks’ time. Meanwhile, Tbilisi on Thursday urged for a special session of the UN Security Council to discuss the incident. Georgia alleges that a Russian plan violated its airspace on August 6 and dropped a missile, which did not explode. A probe in the Kh-58 missile incident is nearing deadlock as neither Russia nor Georgia wants to accept each other’s arguments.
Russian experts who were going to help the investigation into the August 6 incident in the Gori district were expected to land in Georgia early afternoon. But the delegation of 25 military men and diplomats including the Russian Air Force Chief of the Staff Lieutenant-General Igor Khvorov and Russian envoy Valentin Kenyakin landed in Tbilisi on a charter flight as late as at six in the evening.
Georgian’s, however, were not waiting for the Russian delegation eagerly. Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili sounded quite skeptical of the Russian mission in an interview he gave shortly before the Russians’ arrival. “The delegation is headed by Igor Khvorov. He is the general who said after the incident that the Russian Air Force did not perform any flights that day,” Mr. Bezhuashvili said. “But it turned out later that Russia’s Air Force was staging military exercises that day, so the commander’s statement was an outright lie.” The Georgian minister said he is sure that the Russian delegation could not change much about the situation. “The independent commission has already presented its conclusions. Russia undisputedly violated Georgia’s airspace, so it will have a lot of questions to answer,” he added.
Georgia’s Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told reporters Thursday which conclusions outside experts from independent commission made. “We have gathered 600 pieces of evidences, including almost 10,000 pieces of the missile’s debris, witnesses’ accounts and radar reports,” he said. “We have immediately handed all of them to the commission which came to an objective conclusion.”
The independent commission has not as yet released official results of the probe. Georgia’s envoy to the UN Irakly Alasaniya on Thursday called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the August 6 incident at a Security Council session, citing findings of independent experts. Tbilisi urged for a Security Council meeting on August 8, but the proposal was turned down “due to the shortage of accurate information on the incident.” The Georgian foreign minister underscored that this time Tbilisi “would be more active pushing for a Security Council session, and the veto-wielding Russian would be unable to block the event because the session will be discussing its aggressive actions.”
Irakly Alasaniya also asked Ban Ki-moon to gather “the Secretary General’s group of friends on Georgia” excluding Russian representatives. The Georgian diplomat says that his country is to seek “the review of legal instruments of peace settlement on Georgian territory.” Mr. Alasaniya was referring to the review of the 1992 Dagomys Accords and a much-discussed initiative to replace Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by international forces.
Tbilisi’s reaction to the August 6 incident, however, did not stop at the diplomatic attack in the UN only. The developments topped the agenda at an emergency meeting of the Georgian government on Thursday. Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said that “the August 6 incident pushes us to speed up efforts of the state commission on the status of South Ossetia within Georgia.” A decree by President Mikhail Saakashvili set up the commission on July 25 to draft Tbilisi-friendly solution for the South Ossetian deadlock. Ossetia is represented in the commission by Dmitry Sanakoev, leader of the republic’s pro-Georgian temporary administration.
Tbilisi apparently decided to use new tensions with Russia to speed up South Ossetia settlement. At any rate, Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli told the government on Thursday that its “new session would be held in two weeks’ time when the commission is supposed to present final recommendations on the status of South Ossetia.” The commission’s member and Dmitry Sanakoev’s aide, Vladimir Sanakoev told Kommersant that “this timetable is feasible and the recommendations would be ready in two weeks.”
Alexander Gabuev, Moscow; Vladimir Novikov, Tbilisi
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 17, 2007
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