WPS Agency, Russia
May 7 2009

SAAKASHVILI: LEARNING TO TALK

by Irina Aleksidze

HIGHLIGHT: NOT EVEN THE ATTEMPTED MILITARY PUTSCH PERSUADED NATO TO
RECONSIDER AND CANCEL EXERCISE IN GEORGIA; The Alliance is doggedly
determined to run an exercise in Georgia wracked by internal discord.

Even the military putsch in Georgia failed to dissuade the Alliance
from running a planned exercise in this country. Preparations for it
began in Vaziani not far from the capital city of Tbilisi,
yesterday. The military exercise itself, an element of the Partnership
for Peace NATO’s Program, will take place between May 11 and June
1. If sources in the Georgian Defense Ministry were to be believed, no
last-minute corrections were introduced into the legend.

At first, NATO announced that 19 states would participate in the
military exercise in Georgia – several members of the Alliance and
some partners. Six countries (Latvia, Estonia, Armenia, Kazakhstan,
Moldova, and Serbia) nevertheless chose to decline the honor. Baltic
members of the Alliance pleaded economic difficulties, all the rest
decided that participation in the military exercise was not worth
deterioration of their relations with Russia. Official Moscow in the
meantime regards an international military exercise in Georgia, a
thoroughly unstable country as it is, a dangerous provocation
particularly in the light of the war in the Caucasus last year.

More than 1,000 servicemen will be involved in the exercise,
practicing peacekeeping operations and missions. NATO command even
thought it prudent to brief President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili
on what it was all about. Spokesman for the Alliance mentioned that
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had been distressed to
hear "Mr. Saakashvili’s TV-broadcast statements" on the subject. The
Georgian leader called it a NATO exercise while in fact the war game
was to be run within the framework of the Partnership for Peace NATO’s
Program. "Nobody is supposed to misinterpret the exercise in Georgia
that does not have anything to do with the contacts between NATO and
Georgia or with the NATO-Russian relations," Scheffer had said.

In Georgia itself, however, it is not the president alone who regards
the military exercise as purely NATO’s. Approached for comments,
political scientist Soso Tsintsadze said big-time politics was what
the exercise was about. "Where combat training as such is concerned,
there is no way for the exercise to boost defense capacity of Georgia
or NATO to any noticeable degree," he said. "It is political
undertones that should be considered. Russia entertained the hope that
it would bar the road into NATO for Georgia, but the Alliance wouldn’t
scrap its plans all the same."

With NATO servicemen taking up designated positions, Georgian law
enforcement agencies continue investigation of what transpired in
Mukhrovani 30 kilometers west of Tbilisi on May 5. The armored
battalion stationed there mutinied and refused to take orders from the
authorities. Official Tbilisi immediately branded it as an attempt to
wreck the forthcoming exercise and a coup d’etat.

According to an Interior Ministry functionary, law enforcement
agencies pulled in 13 civilians, 7 military police officers, and 10
servicemen within the framework of the investigation.

Military expert Vakhtang Maisaya, one of the arrestees, was charged
with espionage. The Interior Ministry said that he had worked for a
"foreign" intelligence service.

Yesterday, the Interior Ministry released a videotape with confessions
made by 12 officers charged with an attempt to stage a putsch. As for
the armored battalion itself, "… its disbandment or not is something
for the national leadership to decide," the Defense Ministry said.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry finally explained that Tbilisi had never
accused the Russian Federation of organization of the putsch. "The
president and other officials merely asked Russia to stop
provocations," its spokesman announced in response to a stiffly-worded
statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry. ("Political processes in
Georgian society the authorities cannot and do not control are
immediately interpreted as something incited by Russia the enemy.")

There are several hypotheses explaining the events in Mukhrovani
circulating in Georgia. One of them assumes, for example, that the
battalion mutinied only when commanders of military units had been
informed that their subordinates might be deployed to disperse
opposition protests. "Anyway, that servicemen of one of the key
military units broke the oath remains a fact," Tsintsadze
commented. "Whatever their motives, that is."

Leaders of the Georgian opposition took the official interpretation of
the developments in Mukhrovani with a predictable grain of
salt. Addressing a protest rally in Tbilisi, David Gamkrelidze (New
Rightist Party) suggested having the investigation run by
international experts under foreign media coverage. "The authorities
organized this sham to prevent us from cutting off highways," he
announced.

Insisting on Saakashvili’s resignation and snap presidential election,
the opposition decided to continue protests.

Source: Vremya Novostei, No 78, May 7, 2009, pp. 1, 5

Translated by Aleksei Ignatkin