`Medvedev-Sarkozy plan’ one year after: `the games of international formats’.

en.fondsk.ru
Eurasia
13.08.2009
Andrei ARESHEV

On August 12 is the very same day the year before when so-called
`Medvedev-Sarkozy plan’ was signed. Amid `a paralytic stroke’ of the
Security Council, the six principles which had been worked out in
Moscow helped to solve some short-term tasks and to stop the military
actions. But initially it was not planned that being short-term
oriented those principles would become the core of long term
peacekeeping and post conflict rehabilitation of the Caucasus region.
It is known that in August 2008 the Georgian government was counting
on Russia’s non-intervention and when Russia did not meet the
expectations and brought its troops into Gori, Poti and Senaki the
enthusiasm of `builders of the new Georgian nationality’ yielded to
ambition to leave the country as soon as possible.
According to Dmitry Steshin, reporter of the `Komsomolskaya Pravda’
newspaper, there was a terrible panic on August 11 in Tbilisi. `I was
leaving Georgia via Armenia and there was traffic jam on the border
created by diplomatic cars and cars with foreigners. Everyone was
pushed to the roadside, while their cars were leaving the country just
like a column of armed-vehicles’. A Georgian driver said to me than:
`Bastards! They have built their democracy for us and now they are
running away’. The columns of posh jeeps with Georgian flags driving
down the Ararat valley looked quite `patriotic’. Even Saakashvili
himself, as you all remember, was captured by a TV camera saying in
his native English language something like `Let’s get out of here!’ In
such a situation Tbilisi’s authorities grabbed an option of the
European mediation as their last straw.
At first the parties’ interpretations of `Medvedev-Sarkozy plan’ were
totally different. A good example of it is a telephone conversation
between the Russian and French Presidents on August 23 and its further
interpretation
s. According to the website of the French president, `President
Sarkozy thanked President Medvedev after Russia had met its
obligations and withdrawn its troops. In particular, the presidents
agreed that it was urgent to elaborate an international mechanism
under the guidance of OSCE, which would replace Russian patrols in the
security zone in Southern Ossetia. President Sarkozy said he would
like the EU fully to contribute to this process’. Meanwhile the
statement on Medvedev’s official website said the following: `The head
of the Russian state confirmed his readiness to cooperate with OSCE in
accordance with 5th clause of the principles of the conflict’s
settlement, but the substitution of Russian
peacekeepers in security zone with OSCE’s forces was not discussed’.
Later on the website of the French newspaper Le Figaro a disappointing
comment was published saying `Russia is continuing its complicated
diplomatic waltz. Despite the statements of the Elysee Palace the
Kremlin declined its readiness to go too far’. It is obvious that the
author of the comment meant Russia’s readiness to replace its armed
forces in the region with the forces of OSCE. Meanwhile a speech by
A. Wolf, US representative in the UN, at a session of the Security
Council on August 29 reveals the intentions to push the idea of US and
NATO presence in the Caucasus on the pretext of creating an
international mechanism under OSCE guidance: `Locating additional
monitors of OSCE in South Ossetia is just the beginning. Other
international monitors should be let in too’.
As we know, the stage of so-called `complicated diplomatic waltz’ of
Russia came to an end when the Russian President delivered his speech
on August 26, 2008. The way he was speaking was not the way Russia’s
`partners’ wanted him to speak.
Anyway some points of the plan and their specific interpretation are
still being used as a propaganda tool by the forces, which are trying
to revise political results of the five days war as far as possible.
In his article in Financial Times Ronald Asmus, executive director of
the Brussels-based Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of
the United States, says: `The conflict that led to the war is not
over. The core issue has not been resolved. Georgia still wants to go
west and Moscow wants to stop it. That is why we again hear rumbles of
possible military action from Moscow`. `The west needs to unite behind
the position that breaking the rules of the game in Europe carries
real costs and that further aggression against Georgia will lead to
the kind of rethink of its relationship with Russia that did not
happen last year’.
On August 9, in his telephone conversation with Sarkozy Medvedev
stresse the situation in the zone of Georgian-Ossetian conflict it is
necessary to withdraw Georgian troops from the zone and to sign a
binding agreement on non-use of force. In the letter of the Russian
president to his French counterpart, which marks the anniversary of
their plan, Medvedev said `he regrets they have failed to coordinate
parameters of further work of OSCE and UN missions in the region’. `We
believe it is still possible to find the right formulas to continue
the activities of these two important international institutes
there. Of course three parties should agree on them ` South Ossetia,
Abkhazia and Georgia’. Earlier Russia proposed to prolong the
international missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia but to do it
independently of Tbilisi but its proposal was rejected. In their turn
Georgian authorities plan to expand the presence of international
organizations in the country without reducing its `military rhetoric’
and insisting on de-occupation of Georgia.
It should be noted that a global scale informational and diplomatic
war against Russia which followed Georgian attacks of South Ossetia is
not over yet, many battles of this war are ahead and Russia should not
act apologetically because this is the worst it could do.
A year ago ` for the first time since 1991 – people of the Caucasus
saw (and believed), that Russia does not leave friends in the
lurch. The plans of mass annihilation and banishment of the Ossetian
folk were prevented but logically it should be regarded only as the
first step. Tskhinval is still in ruins and there are still scandals
about the money allocated for restoration of the republic. Opinion
polls show alarming shifts in social consciousness: in the North
Caucasus the number of supporters of the official recognition of
Sukhum and Tskhinval and the number of opponents of it is now almost
equal. This means that the level of support of August actions of the
Russian government is significantly weaker there than in other parts
of the country. Moscow should make new steps to strengthen relations
with South Ossetia. These steps should be peaceful but at the same
time as persuasive for the world as the advancing the 58th Russian
army last August to meet Georgian troops.