Posts Tagged “Georgia”
Source: Reuters
Russia aims to extend its control over energy deliveries to the West and it is important that European countries push forward on efforts to diversify routes for oil and gas supplies, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.
As Vice President Dick Cheney visited Italy to seek support for Georgia after its brief war with Russia, the official, said: “The fact is Russia has worked hard to try to corner the market, so to speak, and is working to foreclose options to transit for those energy products across Russia.
“They want everything to come out through Russia and a lot of us think it’s more important that there be diverse means of gaining access to those resources,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“No one country ought to be able to totally dominate those deliveries.”
Italy was the last stop on a weeklong trip for Cheney that began with Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine to reinforce U.S. support for the former Soviet states after the conflict between Tbilisi and Moscow.
The crisis erupted in early August when Georgia tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia and Russia responded with overwhelming force. Cheney, in a weekend speech in Cernobbio, Italy, called Moscow’s actions “brutality against a neighbor”.
In those remarks, he also accused Russia, the world’s second largest oil producer, of using “energy as a tool of force and manipulation” in Central Asia, the Caucasus and elsewhere by threatening to interrupt the flow of oil or natural gas.
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Source: FT.com
The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in August.
The revelation, based on recruitment documents and interviews with US military trainers obtained by the Financial Times, could add fuel to accusations by Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had “orchestrated” the war in the Georgian enclave.
The training was provided by senior US soldiers and two military contractors. There is no evidence that the contractors or the Pentagon, which hired them, knew that the commandos they were training were likely be used in the assault on South Ossetia.
A US army spokesman said the goal of the programme was to train the commandos for duty in Afghanistan as part of Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. The programme, however, highlights the often unintended consequences of US “train and equip” programmes in foreign countries.
The contractors – MPRI and American Systems, both based in Virginia – recruited a 15-man team of former special forces soldiers to train the Georgians at the Vashlijvari special forces base on the outskirts of Tbilisi, part of a programme run by the US defence department.
MPRI was hired by the Pentagon in 1995 to train the Croatian military prior to their invasion of the ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of 200,000 refugees and was one of the worst incidents of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan wars. MPRI denies any wrongdoing.
US training of the Georgian army is a big flashpoint between Washington and Moscow. Mr Putin said on CNN on August 29: “It is not just that the American side could not restrain the Georgian leadership from this criminal act [of intervening in South Ossetia]. The American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army.”
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Source: FT.com
Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, failed on Thursday to win support from China or the former Soviet republics of central Asia in his deepening dispute with the west over military action in Georgia. At a central Asian summit in Tajikistan, Mr Medvedev was unable to persuade Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, or other regional leaders to give explicit backing to Russia’s intervention or its decision to recognise the independence of the two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. While the leaders refrained from criticising Russia, their joint statement gave the Kremlin only modest comfort. “[We] express grave concern in connection with the recent tensions around the South Ossetian issue and urge the sides to solve existing problems peacefully, through dialogue, and to make efforts facilitating reconciliation and talks,” said a final statement from the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The leaders welcomed the French-brokered ceasefire deal that ended the fighting between Russia and Georgia and acknowledged Russia’s role in the Caucasus, saying they supported “Russia’s active role in contributing to peace and co-operation in the region”. Before the summit China had expressed its “concern” about “the latest changes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia”, an unusual move for Beijing which generally refrains from negative comment about Russia. Chinese officials declined to comment on Thursday but western diplomats in Beijing said the summit statement fitted closely with Chinese views. China had avoided any anti-western flourishes and – an absolute priority – any support for separatism. China, with restless ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang province, is concerned about precedents that might be set in Georgia, as are the central Asian states. Full Story…
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Source: This is London
Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a “declaration of war” by Russia.
The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin’s envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.
And Moscow also emphasised it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea.
Enlarge Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) meets with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - the ‘real architect’ of the Georgia conflict - and the Security Council (unseen) in Sochi yesterday
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) meets with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - the ‘real architect’ of the Georgia conflict - and the Security Council (unseen) in Sochi yesterday
The incendiary warning on Western military involvement in Georgia - where NATO nations have long played a role in training and equipping the small state - came in an interview with Dmitry Rogozin, a former nationalist politician who is now ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance.
“If NATO suddenly takes military actions against Abkhazia and South Ossetia, acting solely in support of Tbilisi, this will mean a declaration of war on Russia,” he stated.
Yesterday likened the current world crisis to the fevered atmosphere before the start of the First World War.
Rogozin said he did not believe the crisis would descend to war between the West and Russia.
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