Topic: Caucasus In Crisis- Georgia and Russia at War

[E.R. Campbell]

You know, oligarch, I don’t think most people argue that Georgia’s hands are not dirty – there’s not much, if any, ‘right’ on Georgia’s side.

What I, particularly, ague is that, bad a Georgia’s ‘case’ maybe be, Russia’s is at least as bad.

My view is that Russia is not a ‘western’ nation and it is unlikely ever to become one. It has no traditions of individuality or liberalism which even the weakest ‘liberal’ and ‘capitalist’ democracies share. Nor, of course, does it have good, solid, Eastern, Confucian conservatism. It is, instead, a terribly illiberal society with a callous culture rooted in brutality and servitude. I emphasize, that’s my view.

I cannot see how or why we have any particular interest in making Russia a ‘friend’ – it need not, should not if we can manage it, be an enemy. But, when there is a contest between e.g. Russia and China then I, for one, will advocate coming down on China’s side – where we do have interests.

The situation is different for Europe. Russia is a neighbour – a big, close, and generally malevolent neighbour – but its former satellites have no interest in restoring ties of ‘friendship’ any time soon. So German romanticism must contend with Polish and Czech realism for another generation or so.

We take your point, oligach: Georgia is not heroic or ‘right.’ It’s not even a victim - except of its own leaders’ miscalculations. But that doesn’t say anything ‘good’ about Russia, does it?

Two wrongs don't make a right - we just have a two states in the roles of thugs and bullies.

[Technoviking]

We take your point, oligach: Georgia is not heroic or ‘right.’ It’s not even a victim - except of its own leaders’ miscalculations. But that doesn’t say anything ‘good’ about Russia, does it?

Two wrongs don't make a right - we just have a two states in the roles of thugs and bullies.

Agreed.  Totally agree.  You have said what I have been trying to say since the beginning of this mess (to which I was once accused of being a "commie sympathiser!"  LOL) 

[oligarch]

Notice it’s only the G7 when something really important needs to be done.

G8? Anyone? Russia, Bueller, anyone?

http://en.rian.ru/business/20081011/117679791.html

http://www.russiatoday.com/business/news/31739

[E.R. Campbell]

You will find that there were several meetings after the G7 finance ministers met:

•   ‘The Americas’ finance ministers met;
•   The IMF met; and
•   The G20*met.

Additionally, there may have been ad hoc meetings such as the ”outreach dinner” mentioned here, which is what I think the RNIA article meant. I really, really don't think an "outreach dinner' qualifies as Russia joining the G7 for "talks."

Regarding expanding the G7 to the Gn, (second article LINK) I think that’s an excellent idea and I believe a G14 is appropriate: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Korea and Spain should be the voting members and the European Central Bank, the IMF and the World Bank should be ex officio members. My G14 does not include Russia because, while it is one of the top ten global economies, it is not a trusted partner – as its actions in South Ossetia and Georgia show.

My guess is that at least two or three G7 members would veto adding Russia to any new Gn. Russian membership in the G20 (along with e.g. Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey) is sufficient.


--------------------

* The members of the G-20 are the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The European Union is also a member, represented by the rotating Council presidency and the European Central Bank. To ensure global economic fora and institutions work together, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank, plus the chairs of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank, also participate in G-20 meetings on an ex-officio basis.

[Thucydides]

Piecing together the evidence of cyber attacks originating in Russia. Although there is no conclusive evidence that this was organized or directed by the government, we should remember there was little direct linkage to things like the mid 1980's "Peace Offensive", the unsolved murders of Russian investigative journalists since the late 1990's on, or other activities over the decades that somehow seem to only benefit Russia. Of course, Vladimir Putin and his cronies are either ex KGB or somehow connected to the intelligence world, people who's job description was to make things happen without it being traced back to their government...:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20081020.aspx

The Russian Cyber Militia

October 20, 2008: Georgia was not just invaded by Russian troops last August, it was also hammered on the Internet, with the same Cyber War techniques used against Estonia last year. An investigation by a large team of Internet experts concluded that, as with the attacks on Estonia, the Russian government was not directly involved in the Georgia attacks. The Cyber War attacks on Georgia were coordinated from a non-government web site. If there was any Russian government involvement, it was indirect. For example, the attacks on Georgian web sites began with a very complete list of targets. Not that any of the Russian civilian volunteers couldn't have put such a list together, but this one appeared "general staff" thorough.

In the wake of last year's attacks, Russia was accused of causing great financial harm to Estonia, and Estonia wants this sort of thing declared terrorism, and dealt with. NATO agreed to discuss the issue, but never took any action against Russia. But as a result of that incident, NATO did establish a Cyber Defense Center in Estonia earlier this year. That is one tangible result of the 2007 Cyber War attacks. The Center will study Cyber War techniques and incidents, and attempt to coordinate efforts by other NATO members to create Cyber War defenses, and offensive weapons.

Also earlier this year, Estonia concluded that the weeks of Cyber War attacks it endured last year were not an act of war. Or, rather, the attacks were not carried out by the Russian government, but at the behest of the government by Russian hackers angry at Estonia. Some Internet security researchers believe that the attacks were the result of efforts by a small number of hackers, who had access to thousands of captive (or "zombie") PCs. Some of the zombies were located in Russian government offices. But that's not unusual, as government PCs worldwide tend to be less well protected than those in large corporations. It is believed that other governments are behind similar attacks that temporarily shut down politically embarrassing web sites. This is becoming very common, and often the attacks are ones where only a particular government would benefit.

Last year's attacks were the result of Estonia moving a statue, honoring Russian World War II soldiers, from the center of the capital, to a military cemetery. The Estonians always saw the statue as a reminder of half a century of Russian occupation and oppression. Russia saw the  move as an insult to the efforts of Russian soldiers to liberate Estonia, and enable the Russians to occupy the place for half a century. The basic problem here is that most Russians don't see their Soviet era ancestors as evil people, despite the millions of Russians and non-Russians killed by the Soviet secret police. The Russians are very proud of their defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, ignoring the fact that the Soviet government was just biding its time before it launched its own invasion of Germany and Europe in general. Georgia has been occupied by the Russians for over a century, and were never really very comfortable with it.

While many Russians would have backed a military attack on Estonia, to retaliate for the insult by an ungrateful neighbor, this approach was seen as imprudent. Estonia is now part of NATO, and an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all. It's because of this Russian threat that Estonia hustled to get into NATO. The Russians, however, believed that massive Cyber War attacks would not trigger a NATO response. Meanwhile, Russian language message boards were full of useful information on how to join the holy war against evil Estonia. There's no indication that any Russians were afraid of a visit from the Russian cyber-police for any damage done to Estonia. And the damage was significant, amounting to millions of dollars. While no one was injured, Estonia insisted that this attack, by Russia, should trigger the mutual defense provisions of the NATO treaty. It didn't, but it was a reminder to all that Cyber War is very real.

The same patterns were repeated with the attacks directed at Georgia. Again, the Russian government denies any involvement. Estonia sent two Cyber War exerts to Georgia, to help in dealing with the Internet based attacks coming out of Russia. In addition, Georgia is trying to join NATO.

 

[JackD]

A little bit more about the Ukraine and some activiies going on in this area: 
Mayor of Moscow exports Russia's new nationalism
By Clifford J. Levy

Sunday, October 26, 2008
TSKHINVALI, Georgia: On a clearing in this disputed city, where enemy homes were bulldozed after the conflict in August, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov promised this month to build a new neighborhood for the South Ossetian separatists here.

Grinning widely before a boisterous crowd, which hailed him as a liberator, Luzhkov said he would spend more than $100 million on houses, schools and shopping centers. "We are celebrating a great victory — a victory for freedom and independence," he declared.

The pledge was notable for its cost — a sizable sum in this impoverished breakaway enclave of 70,000 — but also because Luzhkov is the mayor of Moscow, not Tskhinvali. The money is to come from Moscow's city budget.

Yuri Luzhkov is a mayor with a foreign policy. A former Soviet apparatchik who yearns to restore Russia's regional hegemony, he has supported ethnic Russians and stoked separatism in nations along the country's borders. He has championed a new Russian nationalism that the Kremlin effectively backed with force when it wrested South Ossetia from neighboring Georgia this summer.

Over the past decade, Luzhkov, 72, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars from Moscow's well-padded city budget in Russia's "near abroad," several city officials said. He has supported pro-Russian separatists in Moldova, built highways in rebellious Georgian enclaves and constructed housing for the Russian military on the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine.

His enigmatic role unnerves Russia's pro-Western neighbors because he flouts diplomatic rules that prohibit aid to separatists. When foreign governments protest that he is violating their sovereignty and destabilizing their countries, he says he is merely expanding Moscow's sister-city relationships. The Kremlin says he is acting as a local official or a philanthropist.

But the ambiguity seems purposeful. Russia's paramount leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has sought to undermine new pro-Western governments that took power in the so-called color revolutions. Luzhkov is, in a sense, spearheading Putin's counterrevolution.

"In this type of foreign policy, someone has to carry the aggressive message, and Luzhkov is very suitable for this because he thinks it and really believes it," said Konstantin Remchukov, owner of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a Moscow newspaper. "So they use him deliberately."

Luzhkov offered typically pointed remarks at the groundbreaking this month in Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, for the neighborhood, to be called the Moscow district. It is to rise on land that had been Georgian but was essentially ethnically cleansed after being overrun by Russian troops.

"What the heck is Bush thinking?" Luzhkov told the crowd. "He boasts that America supports the aspirations of people for freedom and independence. But the president of America should come to Tskhinvali, wrecked but alive, wrecked but with people who are experiencing joy and freedom."

Short and stocky, a Soviet-style proletariat's cap covering his bald head, Luzhkov is often shown on state-controlled television journeying abroad. A few days before he arrived in South Ossetia, he went to Abkhazia, the other breakaway enclave in Georgia, where he was also greeted as a hero.

He has been the primary Russian patron of the two enclaves, whose ambitions spurred the conflict in August, and he has long required his city to conduct relations with their separatist governments as if they were independent nations. Only after the crisis did the Kremlin follow suit.

He is so popular in South Ossetia that a street was named after him here in Tskhinvali. South Ossetia's president, Eduard Kokoity, referred to him as "a dear friend who is one of us."

But he is the bête noire of leaders who took power in popular "color revolutions" that swept Eastern and Central Europe over the past six years, especially the Rose and Orange Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine.

The Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, professes to loathe Luzhkov, and the feeling is mutual. (During his speech here, Luzhkov called Saakashvili "subhuman.")

Luzhkov, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has also called for Russia to reclaim Crimea from Ukraine. Many Russians consider Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and a Russian naval base on the Black Sea, an integral part of Russia.

If it becomes the next flash point between Russia and the West, Luzhkov will in no small part be responsible. He has nurtured separatist groups in Crimea that since the Georgia conflict have a new battle cry: we will be next.

In May, when Luzhkov got off a plane in Crimea, he was greeted by Ukrainian security service agents who warned him to stop fomenting separatism. He instead proclaimed in a speech that Sevastopol, the site of the Russian naval base, belongs to Russia.

"Is it right for us to keep silent?" he said. "We are speaking the truth."

The next day, Ukrainian officials barred him from Ukraine and began investigating his activities in Crimea, including his support for a cultural center, Moscow House, he set up in Sevastopol.

Ukraine said it was also looking into the affairs of his wife, Yelena Baturina, a billionaire who is Russia's richest woman. The Ukrainians contend that she has assisted him by investing money in areas where he is active.

The Georgians have their own inquiry into Luzhkov. To the South Ossetians, though, any attempts to go after him only underscore the importance of his support.

"If someone comes to your house to kill you, the person who helps you first, the person who extends his rescuing hand to you, how would you feel about him?" said Zalina Abayeva, 38, a government worker who was in the crowd welcoming Luzhkov to Tskhinvali. "That is how we feel about Luzhkov."

A Nationalist Streak

Luzhkov's nationalism sprang from the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, which deeply pained Luzhkov and many other Russian leaders who came of age at the height of Soviet power.

They were embittered by Russia's economic plight in the 1990s and said that the West was taking advantage of Russia's weakness by encroaching upon its zone of influence. Those feelings hardened when NATO admitted former Soviet satellites and republics.

Luzhkov also focused on the plight of millions of ethnic Russians who after the breakup found themselves living in other former Soviet republics. He said he believed that these people had been abandoned by the Kremlin under President Boris N. Yeltsin, so he sent tens of millions of dollars in aid to them.

When Yeltsin negotiated a friendship treaty with Ukraine in the late 1990s, Luzhkov said it amounted to the "surrender of Crimea."

Luzhkov used nationalism — twinned with a reverence for the revived Russian Orthodox Church — to position himself to run for president in 2000. He offered a more establishment-friendly alternative to the virulent nationalism of another contender, the hard-liner Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

"At a certain point, this became part of his political image," Konstantin Zatulin, a member of Parliament and Luzhkov ally, said of Luzhkov. "In the 1990s, he was seen as probably the only defender of Russian speakers in the former Soviet Union."

When it became clear that Putin would win the presidency in 2000, Luzhkov stepped aside. But he continued to raise his profile.

Since he became mayor in 1992, Moscow has been transformed from a dysfunctional and shabby city into a flashy, traffic-choked metropolis. Luzhkov has overseen a building bonanza, including a financial complex on the Moscow River that will include the tallest skyscraper in Europe. He even has his own architectural style — buildings topped with triangular turrets, popularly called Luzhkov towers.

On Saturdays he tours neighborhoods to inspect projects and berate bureaucrats, television cameras in tow. He is mentioned more in the Russian media than any politician but Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev.

Still, like Russia as a whole, Moscow has been plagued by corruption. Luzhkov's second wife, Baturina, 45, whom he married in 1991, became a billionaire through her real estate and manufacturing company, Inteko. The mayor's opponents have attributed her success to cronyism. He denies that.

As a leader of the governing party, he has shown little tolerance for dissent, filing lawsuits against politicians, journalists and others who criticize him.

In May, after Remchukov's newspaper ran an editorial criticizing Luzhkov for his provocative comments on Crimea, city officials sought to evict the newspaper from its building. Only after an uproar ensued did the officials back down, Remchukov said.

While Luzhkov is not a member of Putin's inner circle, Putin has kept him in power. Moscow's mayor used to be popularly elected but is now appointed by the president. Putin, who moved from president to prime minister this year, selected Luzhkov to be Moscow's mayor last year.

Putin has not publicly objected to Luzhkov's grandiose vision of the mayor's role or reined in Luzhkov's spendthrift foreign commitments.

City officials would not specify how much Luzhkov had spent abroad, and government budgets in Russia are opaque. Aleksandr Pogorelov, a spokesman for the city's department of international relations, would say only, "We are engaged in offering aid to those considered Russian compatriots."

Sergei Mitrokhin, an opposition lawmaker in Moscow's city council, said the amount over the past decade was hundreds of millions of dollars. Two other city officials from the governing party, who asked that their names not be disclosed for fear of retribution, concurred.

Mitrokhin said he had opposed such ventures because Moscow had immense needs. "If it is international politics, then the money should be given out from the federal budget," he said.

Aid for an Enclave

In June 2005, Luzhkov invited South Ossetian separatist leaders to a Moscow railroad station, where a train had been loaded with millions of dollars in aid — food, medical equipment, dump trucks, tents and cranes.

Luzhkov said the shipment was humanitarian. The Georgians labeled it military. And the South Ossetians suggested that Luzhkov was helping them gird for a coming conflict.

"We say to those who today are trying to foist a dirty political fight upon us: We are Ossetians, and we are a steadfast people!" said the South Ossetian president, Kokoity.

Later in 2005, as if to drive home the point, Luzhkov paid for major repairs to a strategic highway in South Ossetia to ease the movement of separatist troops, Georgian officials said.

The city of Moscow has also become one of largest owners of resorts and other property in Abkhazia, which has Black Sea beaches and was a popular vacation area in Soviet times, Georgian officials said. The Russian government has assisted the enclaves as well, giving weapons to their soldiers and Russian passports to their residents, but Luzhkov often seems to take the lead.

"He has been very notorious in his hectic activities in these conflict areas," said Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia's reintegration minister. "His role is both political and financial, and that is a dangerous mixture because the political talk also comes with a lot of money."

Luzhkov has also worked to cement Russia's gains in the war. Even before it ended, he dispatched officials to prepare to resettle South Ossetians on what was once an ethnic Georgian village called Tamarasheni.

Before the conflict, South Ossetia was a patchwork of ethnic areas overseen by peacekeepers, and its separatist government had no control over Tamarasheni. The village, which has now been absorbed by the capital, Tskhinvali, is in ruins, filled with the carcasses of looted homes and stores.

In his speech here, Luzhkov did not mention the Georgians who lost their land. He talked about the neighborhood he was building in Tamarasheni, with homes, schools, a sports complex, stores and playgrounds, as a symbol of Russian strength.

"Russia needs nothing," he said. "It has everything. It is the wealthiest country. But when we see injustice toward South Ossetia, toward the people of Abkhazia, it rises up to their defense."

Deepening Russia's Presence

Luzhkov has devoted even greater attention to Crimea, which many Russians consider a nearly sacred, if disputed, part of their patrimony.

This peninsula on the Black Sea was part of Russia until 1954, when the Soviet leader Khrushchev transferred it to Ukraine. It mattered little then because both were part of the Soviet Union. But after Communism's fall, Crimea's ethnic Russians, who make up 60 percent of the population of two million, had to answer to Kiev, Ukraine's capital, not Moscow. Then came the Orange Revolution of 2004, led by Ukrainian nationalists who are hostile to the Kremlin and want to join NATO.

Much of the friction revolves around Russia's Black Sea fleet, which has a base in Sevastopol. The Ukrainian leadership has announced that the fleet must leave when its lease ends in 2017. It has also begun requiring the use of the Ukrainian language in public life.

"Ukraine's leadership is showing an absolutely clear tendency toward the suppression of all things Russian — the Russian language, Russian culture, Russian literature, Russians on their territory," Luzhkov said in August.

In Sevastopol, a city of 350,000, Luzhkov has deepened the Russian presence. He has constructed a branch of Moscow State University, Russian Orthodox cathedrals, schools, a sports complex and other facilities.

Military personnel with the Black Sea fleet refer to their housing as Luzhki because Luzhkov built thousands of apartments for them. He has proposed spending another $2 billion on real estate development in Crimea.

Putin has said that Russia respects Ukraine's territorial integrity, but he has not disavowed the separatists or Luzhkov. In fact, after Luzhkov was barred from Ukraine in May, the Kremlin lashed back.

"Luzhkov only expressed a view that, incidentally, coincides with the point of view of most Russians who responded painfully to the disintegration of the U.S.S.R.," the Foreign Ministry said.

The fervor that Luzhkov has helped whip up was evident last month at a rally in Sevastopol on a hill lined with graves of Russian soldiers who had died defending the city when it belonged to Russia.

Waving Russian flags and singing Soviet anthems, residents praised Russia's victory in Georgia and spoke of Luzhkov as a brother in arms. They said he was helping to free them from Ukrainian tyranny.

The city's chief Russian Orthodox priest, the Rev. Sergei Khaluta, blessed the rally. "Truth is with our country!" he said, and it was clear that he did not mean Ukraine.

More Articles in World » A version of this article appeared in print on October 26, 2008, on page A1 of the New York edition.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=17242346

[oligarch]

What really happened in South Ossetia?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/7695956.stm

After gaining exclusive access to South Ossetia, Tim Whewell has discovered evidence Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region in August.

[Bruce Monkhouse]

MAY HAVE?

Of course they did, in war stuff happens that afterwards didn't pass the sniff test but at the time.......

[Kat Stevens]

What really happened in South Ossetia?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/7695956.stm

After gaining exclusive access to South Ossetia, Tim Whewell has discovered evidence Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region in August.

And I'm certain the rest of the emotionally stable, peaceloving Slavic peoples of the region acted with perfect decorum, just like in FRY.

[Thucydides]

Russia may have some difficulty maintaining an aggressive posture in the current economic environment. Follow the link in the article to see the various break points in oil prices price and their effects on Russia:

http://www.thepolitic.com/archives/2008/12/19/a-bright-side-of-the-economic-downturn/

A Bright-side of the Economic Downturn

December 19, 2008 · By Greg Farries

The mighty bear might have some trouble flexing it’s muscles and scaring it’s neighbors in this chilly economic climate:

    The bleak scenario would mark a rapid unraveling of Russia’s oil-fueled economic gains over the past eight years, during which time the government has paid down most of its foreign debt and built up a vast stockpile of international reserves.

    [...]

    Russia, which grew at over 8 percent last year, is facing a severe slowdown in growth, and possibly even recession next year, analysts say. Torrid figures released earlier this week showed that industrial output had plunged 10.8 percent in November from the previous month, signaling a dramatic slowdown in the final quarter.

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Now this is how we can decide future conflicts in the area......and of course Simon Cowell will be the presiding arbitrator.

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/593292
Dig at Putin on Georgia band's mind
Feb 26, 2009 04:30 AM

TBILISI –Having suffered a battlefield bruising from Russia last August, Georgia has taken the fight with its northern neighbour to the disco floor, with plans to present a tune that jabs at Russia's pre-eminent leader, Vladimir Putin, at Europe's premier song contest.
The song's title, "We Don't Wanna Put In," is a barely successful play on the Russian prime minister's name. The song, sung in accented English by a Georgian group called Stephane and 3G, was chosen by popular vote last week as Georgia's entry for Eurovision, the mega-popular European song contest to be hosted by Moscow in May.

Georgia was planning to boycott this year's event to protest Russia's de facto annexation of two Georgian separatist regions after the August war, but it apparently settled on taking a musical swipe at Putin right in the Russian capital.
The news has begun to excite patriotic passions in Russia, where anti-Georgian sentiment remains high after the war, which many in Russia believe Georgia started.

"In my opinion, this is amoral," Yana Rudkovskaya, the Russian producer for Dima Bilan, last year's Eurovision winner, told Echo Moskvy radio. "I think the Eurovision board and the heads of Channel One should forbid this song because it insults our country.''

Stephane Mgebrishvili, the Georgian group's frontman, said he and his three female bandmates had hoped for this kind of resonance when they came up with the song.
"The most important thing for us was to create the project that would attract as much attention as possible," said Mgebrishvili, 29.

[Yrys]

Russia blocks UN's Abkhazia role



Russia has vetoed an extension of the UN observers' mandate in Georgia, so a 131-strong UN
team will now have to leave the Georgia-Abkhazia border zone.

Russia's move at the UN means there will be no more impartial international observers inside
the disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The UN mandate was "built on old realities,"
said Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin. Russia has controlled the rebel areas since
a war with Georgia last year.

Speaking at the UN Security Council in New York, Mr Churkin said "only a new security system
on the Georgian-Abkhaz border could guarantee non-aggression by Georgia".

Recognition row

Russia has recognised the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but the West says
the two regions remain part of Georgia. Abkhazia's ethnic Georgian community complains
that security has deteriorated since last year's war.

Georgia's Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze denounced the Russian veto, saying Tbilisi would
never accept any decision that challenged Georgia's territorial integrity. UK Foreign Secretary
David Miliband accused Russia of using its veto power to "pursue its own narrow interests".

The UN mission has been on the ground in Abkhazia since 1993, when it was deployed to
monitor an earlier ceasefire between Abkhaz separatists and Georgian forces.

The BBC's Tom Esslemont in Tbilisi says the ending of the UN mandate comes just as the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) prepares to terminate its small
observer mission in Georgia too. It means that the European Union Monitoring Mission is the
only recognised international observation force on the ground, he reports.

With Russian soldiers and Georgian police units stationed metres away from each other along
the borders, it now falls to the EU monitors alone to make sure the fragile truce is honoured.
But their mandate only allows them access to areas under Georgian control, our correspondent
says.

[Yrys]

Suicide Bomber Rams Truck Into Police Station in Russia, Killing 20

MOSCOW — At least 20 people were killed and dozens were wounded
when a suicide bomber rammed a truck filled with explosives into a
police headquarters in Russia’s tumultuous North Caucasus region on
Monday, according to government officials. It was the latest episode
in a spate of violence to hit the area in recent weeks.

The blast struck the police headquarters in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia,
about 9 a.m. local time as many police officials were arriving at work. The
attack seemed to further undermine the authority of Yunus-Bek Yevkurov,
Ingushetia’s populist president, who came to power last October vowing a
softer approach in dealing with rebel violence than that of Ramzan Kadyrov,
the president of neighboring Chechnya.

It was the bloodiest single attack to hit Ingushetia in some time, though violence
against the police and government officials in this and other North Caucasus
republics occurs almost daily.

Mr. Yevkurov himself was seriously wounded in a suicide attack on his convoy
in June and announced last week that he would soon return to work. Ingushetia’s
construction minister, Ruslan Amirkhanov, was assassinated in his office last week.
Russian television coverage of Monday’s attack showed rescue workers picking
through smoldering rubble punctuated by a huge crater.

“It was a suicide bomber,” said Kaloi Akhilgov, the spokesman for Mr. Yevkurov.
“He rammed the gate of the police headquarters, drove into the courtyard and blew
himself up.” The blast occurred in a heavily populated area, not far from several
banks and government buildings. A six-story residential building nearby was also
heavily damaged.

About 60 people were wounded, the prosecutor general’s office said, though the
Emergency Situations Ministry put the number of wounded at 138. Mr. Akhilgov said
10 of the wounded were children.

A spokeswoman for the central hospital in Nazran said dozens of victims had arrived
with severe burns and broken bones. The investigative wing of the prosecutor general’s
office put the death toll at 20 by Monday evening.

In response to the bombing, President Dmitri A. Medvedev fired Ingushetia’s interior minister
and ordered the federal interior minister, Rashid G. Nurgaliyev, to increase the strength of
police forces in Ingushetia after the attack. “I suggest that this is not only the result of
problems connected to terrorism, but also the result of unsatisfactory work by law enforcement
agencies in the republic,” Mr. Medvedev said. “This terror attack could have been prevented.”

The statement appeared to criticize Mr. Yevkurov’s strategy on the militant threat. A former
intelligence officer and a practicing Muslim, Mr. Yevkurov has reached out to opposition leaders
as well as militant commanders in an attempt to ease the bubbling tensions in Ingushetia. But
the violence has continued, fueled in part by the local militants as well as by the arrival of
separatist fighters fleeing Mr. Kadyrov’s brutal counterinsurgency in Chechnya, where a decade
and a half of internecine warfare has ground down the rebel movement to a paltry, though potent,
few.

The bombing on Monday comes just days after separate attacks in neighboring Chechnya and
Dagestan killed over 20 people, including seven female employees of a sauna in Dagestan. In
Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, a police officer was killed and three officers were wounded
on Monday when a bomb exploded next to their jeep, the Ria Novosti news agency said, citing
a police spokesman.

In a sign that Mr. Yevkurov’s experiment in reconciliation has failed, Mr. Kadyrov has sent
Chechen commanders to Ingushetia to conduct counterterrorism operations there. “We have
a common enemy and a common task to eliminate it,” Mr. Kadyrov said in a statement on
his Web site on Monday. “Together with President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, we will realize this
mission and do everything necessary to liquidate the remaining militants. The leadership of
this country supports us.”

[Bruce Monkhouse]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8281990.stm

Georgia 'started unjustified war' 
 
The report does not put the whole blame on either country
The war in Georgia last year was started by a Georgian attack that was not justified by international law, an independent report has concluded.

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