HUNDREDS OF GERMANS EVACUATED FROM GEORGIA
The Local
11 Aug 08 13:13 CET
Hamburg, Germany
Around 200 Germans have left Georgia because of the current conflict
and 100 more are due to leave by bus later on Monday for the Armenian
capital Yerevan, the German Foreign Ministry said.
Nigerian armed group renews threat to German building firm (11 Aug 08)
German minister says Georgia breaking international law (10 Aug 08)
Merkel calls for immediate ceasefire in Georgia (10 Aug 08) Some 300
German citizens were still in Georgia and the German embassy was taking
steps to contact them to give them a chance to leave the country if
they wished, ministry spokesman Jens Plotner told a news conference.
Plotner stressed that the Germans were not being "evacuated" but were
leaving voluntarily. He added that the German embassy in Tbilisi was
also ready to help citizens from other European countries.
"There is no reason for panic but we are calling on all German citizens
… to contact the embassy," he said.
Russian planes bombed radars at Tbilisi airport and hit civilian
targets in the city of Gori near the border with South Ossetia on
Monday, a Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The UN refugee agency said that up to 80 percent of Gori’s population
of 50,000 have fled the city – the main Georgian city near to South
Ossetia – because of Russian attacks.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke by phone with Georgian President
Mikheil Saakashvili on Monday morning and repeated her call for an
immediate end to all violence, her spokesman Thomas Steg said.
Merkel also fully supports the decision of French President Nicolas
Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, to go to
Moscow, Steg added.
Merkel said it was "essential that there is an immediate and
non-conditional ceasefire and for all armed forces to withdraw to
the positions held before the conflict" and that "the territorial
integrity of Georgia should be respected," Steg said.
He added that a meeting between Merkel and Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev in Sochi on the Black Sea would take place on Friday as
planned, but that contrary to the original agenda "practically the
only topic" of discussion would be the current conflict.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has also spoken
several times by phone with his Russian and Georgian counterparts,
and also took part in a conference call on Sunday with other EU
foreign ministers, Ploetner said.