Translated material
The UN is still there
The international community fails to achieve unity in trying to stop the war
The international community is trying to stop the war in South Ossetia, but these efforts have had no immediate effect. Just yesterday, the Foreign Ministers of Finland and France, Alexander Stubb and Bernard Kouchner, arrived in Tbilisi. These countries currently chair the OSCE and the European Union, respectively. According to Bernard Kouchner, the mediators are seeking “the withdrawal of the parties’ troops to the lines established by the international community”: “We will try to use all our influence so that a truce is established and hostilities cease.” This is part of the plan proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, although in fact there is nothing new here; many have been talking about the need to withdraw troops from the first days of the conflict.German Chancellor Angela Merkel also stated the need to “immediately and unconditionally introduce a ceasefire in the Caucasus” and withdraw all armed formations to “the positions they occupied before the start of the conflict.” A meeting of the European Union Council at the level of foreign ministers is scheduled for Wednesday in Brussels.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also said yesterday that “all forces that do not have the authority to be in the conflict zone must leave it”: “A long-term solution can only be found through peaceful negotiations.”
The European Union proposes to solve the problem through negotiations and does not question the territorial integrity of Georgia. Members of the UN Security Council also agree with these basic principles, but for all this, for several days now they have been unable to come up with an agreed statement that would assess what is happening. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, convened on the night of August 8 at Russia's request, could not even adopt a statement for the press. “We presented a project with a call to stop the bloodshed. And our Western partners said that it was not possible to accept such a document and that one-sided, in their opinion, formulations should be avoided,” Maria Zakharova, press attache of the Russian permanent mission to the UN, told Vremya Novostey. The stumbling block turned out to be the US demand to call for a ceasefire “on all sides related to the conflict, and not just Georgian forces and South Ossetian formations.” “The United States tried to declare Russia a belligerent party and prevent it from performing peacekeeping functions,” said our interlocutor.
In recent days, consultations were held at the UN Security Council in the format of a briefing by the UN Secretariat. “In response to statements from the Russian side that genocide of the Ossetian people is being carried out in Georgia, the United States, with the active support of Great Britain, raised the issue of Russia’s military presence. They tried to present the case in such a way that it was allegedly the cause of tension and bloodshed in the region,” says Zakharova.
Yesterday the UN Security Council met again. This time, the Georgian delegation demanded its convocation and distributed a special letter. However, a few hours before the meeting, the United States took the initiative, demanding it be held on its own behalf. According to Vremya Novostey, a draft anti-Russian resolution, prepared by the Americans with the assistance of the Georgian delegation, appeared in advance on the sidelines of the UN Security Council. Its authors were not embarrassed that Russia, which has the right of veto in the Security Council, would not allow the adoption of such a document.
Yesterday, Russia's permanent representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, in a speech at a Security Council meeting, expressed the opinion about the need for contacts with the Georgian side, but not personally with President Mikheil Saakashvili, since he, in violation of existing agreements, launched military actions against South Ossetia: “What a decent person will be with should I talk to him now? The Russian diplomat also drew attention to the fact that 127 American military advisers currently work in the Georgian Ministry of Defense. Churkin recalled that criticism of Russia comes from the lips of representatives of “the country (USA - Ed. ), whose actions we know well, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
There is some inconsistency in the US position. US President George W. Bush, in a conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday, expressed serious concern about the state of affairs and expressed his intention to assist in its return to the mainstream of a political and diplomatic settlement. However, yesterday, Bush's deputy national security adviser, James Jeffrey, who accompanied Bush in China, made harsher statements, calling Russia's military actions "dangerous and disproportionate" and directly stating that the ongoing escalation of the conflict with Georgia over South Ossetia "will damage relations between Washington and Moscow."
It is noteworthy that, again on Saturday, August 9, a senior US State Department official told Western journalists on condition of anonymity that Georgia bears “part of the responsibility” in the South Ossetian conflict. According to him, the United States “throughout the entire period has persistently called on the Georgian government to show restraint and at all costs avoid a military conflict with the Russian armed forces and escalation.” “We have expressed this very clearly,” the American diplomat emphasized.
While the UN, EU and OSCE are trying to find a political solution to the problem, a number of Eastern European states saw in the tragic events in South Ossetia a new reason for anti-Russian rhetoric. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry offered its mediation services, expressing solidarity with the Georgian government. The reaction of the Russian foreign policy department was not long in coming. “The Ukrainian state, which has recently been recklessly arming the Georgian army to the teeth, thereby directly encouraging the Georgian leadership to intervene and ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia, has no moral right to lecture others, much less claim its role in the settlement,” - recalled on Smolenskaya Square.
Yesterday, the Russian Foreign Ministry also responded to the joint statement of the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, released on August 8. In it, they “strongly condemned the actions of the Russian armed forces against the sovereign and independent state of Georgia” and demanded that the EU and NATO “stand against the spread of imperialist and revisionist policies in eastern Europe.” Deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry Grigory Karasin commented on this statement: “Apparently, the most cynical and untimely forms of expressing such an incomprehensible and absolutely illogical position have been found. It was because of such signals that what began on August 7 in South Ossetia happened.” Russia intends to appeal to the International Criminal Court in The Hague regarding the facts of crimes committed by the Georgian military in the conflict zone.