LITTLE BENEFIT IN OSCE MISSION: GEORGIA MINISTER
By Julian Hale
DefenseNews.com
Aug 21 2008
BRUSSELS – Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili has expressed
doubt that the immediate deployment of 20 military monitoring
officers to the areas adjacent to South Ossetia, as supported by
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
will appreciably improve the environment.
"Russia was successful in restricting their mandate so that they will
have no opportunity to see what is going on in areas under Russian
control," said Tkeshelashvili to members of the European Parliament
at an extraordinary meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee on
Aug. 20. She added that observers would therefore not have the
chance to see the destruction of villages and the ethnic cleansing
of Georgians that is being completed.
Land Warfare She said that bridges had been blown up or mined
and that there would need to be an "extensive demining operation"
after the Russians had withdrawn. Painting a bleak picture of the
humanitarian situation in areas still under Russian control, she
said that in addition to scarcities of food and medicine, looting,
destruction of property and executions were ongoing.
Tkeshelashvili indicated that Russia’s naval blockade was still
fully in place and was having an impact not just on Georgia but on
Armenia, for which Georgia is a transit state. She said that Georgia
had suffered cyberattacks on the president’s Web site before and on
other government information spaces during the Russian incursion.
"This is not just a regional issue but an issue for the whole
of Europe," said Tkeshelashvili at a press conference after the
event. "Russia is reincarnating the notion of its sphere of influence
and challenging Europe with the aggressive action it has taken."
She was confident that Georgia would have a NATO Membership Action
Plan soon if not membership in an accelerated fashion.
She also said that there was "no sign of the withdrawal of Russian
forces from Georgia" and that Russia had in fact "enlarged the
territorial scope of its military operation."
Tkeshelashvili added that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has
clearly stated that Russian forces cannot be peacekeepers in a Georgia
that it has invaded. She and Solana had discussed the possibility of
an EU peacekeeping mission, she said.
The chairman of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee,
Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, said that the European Parliament was planning
a debate in plenary in Strasbourg and was drafting a resolution on
the issue. He expected members to recommend to EU states that they
first send in observation forces and then peacekeeping forces.
Tkeshelashvili also denounced the Russian talk of thousands of
civilians having died in South Ossetia as "disinformation," referring
to Human Rights Watch figures in the hundreds.