Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who represents the EU, secured the agreement of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko in Kiev, after talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday at his residence outside Moscow.

The gas shutdown, triggered by Russia’s dispute with Ukraine over prices and debt, renewed calls in Europe to develop nuclear power and alternative sources of energy. Fuel supplies are dwindling as temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Balkans spur energy demand.

“In some eastern European countries people are sitting there without heating,” said Bernhard Jeggle, an analyst at Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart. “They’re in a pretty tough situation, but that should be over soon.”

The accord was signed yesterday in Moscow by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, OAO Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller and Czech Trade Minister Martin Riman, according to Russian state broadcaster Vesti-24.

“Ukraine signed the protocol so that Ukraine is not a barrier for Russia to resume gas deliveries to the European Union,” Timoshenko told reporters. Topolanek said Ukraine had met all conditions for Russia to resume gas shipments.

Shuttle Diplomacy

Russia, Ukraine and the EU struck an accord in principle Jan. 8 on monitoring flows of the fuel, paving the way for the resumption of deliveries to the 27-nation bloc. Since then the deal has been held up by disputes on how to deploy monitors.

Earlier yesterday Topolanek said the Ukrainian leadership gave him verbal assurances that Russian experts will be allowed to monitor transit shipments in Ukraine, according to Vesti. At the same time, international monitors will check flows into the Ukrainian pipeline network from Russian territory, he said.

His role as EU mediator is reminiscent of French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Tbilisi during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August. France, which held the EU presidency at the time, was instrumental in ending the five-day war.

Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, have strained relations with Russia in their efforts to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Gas Prices

Natural-gas prices in the U.K., Europe’s largest market, initially fell this week on speculation gas could soon be flowing again through Ukraine after EU officials brokered a deal. Gazprom halted transit flows on Jan. 7 after accusing Ukraine of diverting gas intended for other buyers for its own use, a charge denied by the country. Russian supplies to Ukraine itself were suspended Jan. 1 pending a new contract.

European Commission President Jose Barroso “warmly” welcomed the accord today. “We now need the gas to flow immediately to the EU,” Barroso said in an e-mailed statement released jointly with EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. They said the monitoring teams “will start to do their work as soon as possible.”

A group of 17 EU monitors arrived in Ukraine and a further five were on their way to Moscow, the European Commission said in an e-mailed statement. Two Commission officials were included in the team sent to each country, while the remaining members were experts supplied by European gas companies.

Monitoring Teams

In Ukraine the monitors were dividing into five teams, two of which would travel to the eastern border where the gas arrives near Sumy and Novopskov, two to the western border where it exits near Uzhhorod and one to a dispatching center to coordinate information.

Gazprom is ready to start work resuming gas shipments to European customers via Ukraine as soon as it has confirmation of the accord’s signature, Miller said in a statement yesterday. He said the company had planes waiting to fly experts to the pumping stations. It would first send minimum volumes needed, mainly to Balkan countries, and increase the amount quickly once it was sure Ukraine was not siphoning any fuel.

Once Russia resumes shipments, it will take 36 hours for the gas to start reaching European consumers. Supplies to at least 20 nations have been affected.

Gazprom’s European customers receive 80 percent of supplies through pipelines that cross Ukraine. The Russian exporter, which provides a quarter of Europe’s gas, said its overall deliveries to Europe were cut by about 60 percent on Jan. 7.

European Supplies

Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia were among eastern European countries that maintained curbs on gas use on Jan. 9. Most countries in western Europe have suffered less from the cutoff, tapping stockpiles and alternative supplies to meet demand.

Temperatures were forecast to fall as low as minus 11 degrees Celsius in Zagreb and minus 15 degrees Celsius in Sofia this weekend, according to AccuWeather.com.

NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy Chief Executive Officer Oleh Dubina returned to Kiev yesterday from Moscow after three days of talks on his country’s dispute with Russia on the price Russian wants to charge for 2009 gas deliveries to Ukraine.

“Russia offered us $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, a rate which doesn’t correspond to a European price, and a rate which we cannot accept,” Dubina said in a statement posted on the government’s web site. There is no plan for Dubina to return to Moscow and Naftogaz said “further talks should be conducted by top politicians.”

Ukraine paid Russia $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters for gas last year.

Energy Alternatives

The dispute, over transit fees and debt as well as the gas price, has come as Ukraine’s leaders, Timoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko, are facing a financial crisis that has forced them to seek a $16.4 billion International Monetary Fund bailout.

In 2006, Russia turned off all Ukrainian gas exports for three days, causing volumes to fall in the EU, and also cut shipments by 50 percent last March during a debt spat.

The Slovak government yesterday approved the restart of a nuclear reactor, in the face of opposition from the European Union, to meet the country’s energy needs as the halt in Russian gas supplies continued.

Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters the move would be for a “necessary” period until the gas market stabilizes. The reactor in Jaslovske Bohunice was closed Dec. 31 as part of the conditions imposed on Slovakia when it joined the EU.

The Polish government will also decide next week on building nuclear power plants in Poland, according to Tomasz Misiak, a member of Poland’s ruling party Citizens’ Platform and chairman of Senate’s economy committee.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

On a first visit to Moscow that he linked to Russia’s growing interest in South and Central America, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Russia may be considering a security presence there and warned of a regional arms race.

Just weeks after a Russian warship carried out joint exercises with Venezuela and then visited Cuba for the first time since the Cold War, Shannon said Washington would draw its conclusions based on future Russian actions.

“What would be telling however, is not this ship visit, it’s the next one,” said Shannon, responsible for Western Hemisphere relations in the State Dept.

“If the purpose of this ship visit was just to make a point about Russia’s periphery, if its purpose was just to make a point about Georgia, then we probably won’t see them again,”

“But if the Russians really are attempting to build a more longstanding relationship in the region, then they will look for ways to maintain some presence in their security relationship with partners,” Shannon told Reuters in a shared interview.

Immediately after Russia’s August war, U.S. warships traveled to Georgian Black Sea ports, a gesture that angered Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who asked how Washington would like it if Russia sent ships close to U.S. waters.

In September, Moscow dispatched two Tu-160 nuclear capable bombers to Venezuela and a naval flotilla there, led by the nuclear-powered battle cruiser “Peter the Great.”

Because of its overwhelming naval presence, the United States was not threatened by Russia in the region, said Shannon.

“What’s interesting for us about how Russia is engaging in the region is this is not the Soviet Union, they do not bring an ideological purpose to their engagement,” he said.

Shannon said he did not directly discuss the Georgia conflict during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. But he urged Russia to join patrols in the region if it intended a future presence.

ARMS SALES

Russia’s trade interests include arms sales and, while Venezuela has the right to buy weapons, said Shannon, he was concerned an arms race might develop in the region or that decommissioned arms might be sold off to illegal groups.

“They’re (arms) sold in a context, so when Venezuela buys $4 billion worth of weapons with very high-end aircraft, it has an impact in the region and one consequence of this is the Brazilian decision to modernize its armed forces,” said Shannon.

Russia and Venezuela have signed 12 arms contracts worth $4.4 billion over the past two years, a Kremlin source said in September when Moscow announced it was providing Caracas with $1 billion in credit for more weapons purchases.

Arms sales to Caracas have included 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, dozens of helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles.

But Shannon said that, should Russia intend further naval voyages to the region, it should help block drug trafficking.

“If the Russian navy intends more Caribbean voyages, it shouldn’t just sail around, but do something useful like help patrol the seas.”

Reuters

Asked about a Russian warship transiting the Panama Canal earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — who saw the ship while crossing the canal last week — told The Associated Press: “I guess they’re on R&R. It’s fine.”

The Pentagon, while puzzled by the Russians’ actions, also is taking a ho-hum attitude. The U.S. military commander for the region, Adm. James Stavridis, head of the U.S. Southern Command, said that from his vantage point, there is no reason to be concerned about the Russian naval activity.

“They pose no military threat to the U.S.,” Stavridis said in an e-mail to the AP on Tuesday.

It was the first such passage by a Russian or Soviet warship since World War II.

There is no suggestion of a military confrontation, but the Russian moves are notable in part because they appear to reflect an effort by Moscow to flex some muscle in America’s backyard in response to Washington’s support for the former Soviet republic of Georgia and elsewhere on the Russian periphery. That includes U.S. missile defense bases to be erected in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Russians were unhappy with a U.S. decision to send a state-of-the-art warship into the Black Sea as part of an American humanitarian aid mission for Georgia in the aftermath of last August’s war with Russia. The Russians also are angry about the Bush administration’s push to add Georgia and the former Soviet republic of Ukraine as members of the NATO military alliance.

Under the gaze of the U.S. Southern Command, Russian ships this fall held joint exercises with the navy of Venezuela, whose president, Hugo Chavez, is a fierce U.S. critic.

Navy Rear Adm. Tom Meek, the deputy director for security and intelligence at Southern Command, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he sees little chance of Russia teaming up with Venezuela in a militarily meaningful way.

“I don’t think that Russia and Venezuela are really serious about putting together a military coalition that would give them any kind of aggregate military capability to oppose anybody,” Meek said. “Frankly, the maneuvers they conducted down here were so basic and rudimentary that they did not amount to anything, in my opinion.”

And it’s not just the Russian navy that is showing up in the West.

In September, two Tu-160 long-range bombers, known in the West as Blackjacks, landed in Venezuela — the first landing in the Western Hemisphere by Russian military aircraft since the Cold War ended.

Rice shrugs it off.

“A few aging Blackjacks flying unarmed along the coast of Venezuela is — I don’t know why one would do it, but I’m not particularly going to lose sleep over that,” she said in the AP interview Monday.

She said Russia is welcome to have relations with countries in the West.

“I don’t think anybody’s confused about the preponderance of power in the Western Hemisphere,” Rice said.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has made no effort to hide his irritation at what he considers American arrogance.

“God forbid from engaging in any kind of controversy in the American continent,” he said, referring to his Blackjack bombers flying to Venezuela for a training exercise. “This is considered the ‘holiest of the holy,’” he said during a meeting with Western political scholars at his Black Sea residence in Sochi. “And they drive ships with weapons to a place just 10 kilometers from where we’re at? Is this normal? Is this an equitable move?”

On Monday, the Russian navy announced that a destroyer and two support vessels will visit Cuba for the first time since the Soviet era. The ships are from a squadron that has been on a lengthy visit to Latin America; they are scheduled to put in at Havana on Friday for a five-day stay, navy spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said.

Moscow’s support for Cuba fell sharply after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the Russians have bolstered ties recently.

The joint naval exercises with Venezuela were Russia’s way of “demonstrating to the U.S. that it has a foothold in a region traditionally dominated by the U.S.,” said analyst Anna Gilmour at Jane’s Intelligence Review.

Still, she and many Russian analysts say Moscow’s deployments of warships are largely for show.

Russia’s navy is a shadow of its Soviet-era force, having suffered from a serious lack of investment since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Many ships and submarines have rusted away at their berths, and deadly accidents occur regularly.

Yahoo! News

Under fire from opponents who say he walked into a war Georgia could not possibly win, Saakashvili defended his actions of the night of August 7 during televised testimony before a bipartisan parliamentary commission probing the war.

Saakashvili remains popular among voters, but Georgia’s fractious opposition is using the five-day conflict and its consequences to mount a fresh challenge to the pro-Western president, who came to power with the 2003 “Rose Revolution.”

Saakashvili’s defense was aimed primarily at a domestic audience. Western states did condemn Russia’s intervention, but have not disguised their dissatisfaction with Georgia’s assault on the rebel region. NATO looks certain to again deny Tbilisi a roadmap to membership when alliance foreign ministers meet on Dec 2-3.

Saakashvili dismissed as “utter nonsense” testimony this week by Georgia’s ex-ambassador to Russia, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, who said Tbilisi had been the aggressor having mistakenly convinced itself it had the blessing of the United States.

“We acknowledge and confirm … that the Georgian government took the decision to undertake a military operation in order to offer resistance to a widescale Russian intervention, a widescale assault on a peaceful population,” Saakashvili said.

Defense Minister David Kezerashvili told the commission on Thursday that Georgia attacked the rebel capital Tskhinvali on Aug 7-8 because Russian forces were pouring across the border and it was a matter of time before they began attacking Georgian-populated villages.

But at the time, there was no public statement from the Georgian leadership that Russian forces were invading. The shelling of Tskhinvali after a ceasefire of several hours and the subsequent ground assault was justified as a response to rebel shelling of Georgian villages.

Saakashvili repeated the claim made later that Russia had already invaded and forced his hand, recalling “the most difficult choice of my life.” Russia says the claim is nonsense, and that it intervened in its ex-Soviet neighbor only to defend South Ossetian civilians.

“RED LINE”

“Our answer to the question whether we have undertaken military action is ‘Yes’,” he told the commission. “It was a difficult decision, but it was an inevitable one.”

“It’s the responsibility of any democratically elected leader to defend his country, borders and peaceful population,” he said. “I couldn’t believe they (Russia) would cross that red line, I couldn’t believe they would be first to take this step.”

The war that ensued piled pressure on already strained relations between the West and Russia and deepened concern over the security of the Caucasus as a transit route for oil and gas to Western markets, bypassing Russia.

There had been skirmishes for months in South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region which threw off Tbilisi’s rule in 1991-92.

Russia’s counter-strike to the Georgian assault of August 7 drove the Georgian army out. Moscow’s troops then pushed further into Georgia, saying they needed to prevent further Georgian attacks, but withdrew in October.

The West condemned Russia’s “disproportionate response,” but shied away from imposing sanctions on what for many European states is a vital energy supplier.

Moscow recognized South Ossetia and Georgia’s other rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

Georgia says 228 Georgian civilians and 169 military personnel were killed, while tens of thousands of Georgian refugees have yet to return to their homes.

Reuters

In all, eight parties met behind closed doors at the U.N.’s European headquarters in Geneva for the one-day talks and agreed to meet again next month, EU representative Pierre Morel said.

“Today we have taken a big step forward,” Morel said. “All of the participants have recognized that the security situation remains quite unsatisfactory.”

The U.N. refugee agency estimates more than 30,000 people are still unable to return to their homes, and tensions in the region remain high.

“There are places where ethnic clashes and ethnic hatred still prevail,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin admitted.

His comments were mirrored by Georgia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, who said he feared “ethnic cleansing in those occupied territories where ethnic Georgians still live.”

Morel said it was the first time that all of the parties had met directly. An initial attempt at negotiations broke down last month, in part over disagreements whether representatives from Georgia’s two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, should take part.

Maxim Gvindzhiya of Abkhazia’s separatist government said his delegation and one from South Ossetia attended on an informal basis this time to keep the talks on track.

The other participants were the EU, the U.N., Russia, Georgia, the United States and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried said the talks “went far better” than last time.

“There were productive discussions of some of the tough issues. (But) there remain vast areas of fundamental differences,” Fried said. “There were and are a lot of people with guns … who just want to shoot.”

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the talks “a positive step.”

Russia, meanwhile, said it reiterated during the meeting that Georgia needs to pledge not to attack South Ossetia or Abkhazia, and that other countries should refrain from supplying Tbilisi with offensive military weapons.

Karasin said he came away with a “mixed” assessment of the meeting, but added now there is a “sense of hope.”

Johan Verbeke, special U.N. envoy for Georgia, said the sides had agreed on methods to demarcate borders and had begun work on security issues and the return of refugees.

“I’d call this a quantum leap,” said Verbeke. “All of the delegations did speak, all of the delegations listened.”

More than 160,000 people fled fighting that broke out Aug. 7 when Georgian forces launched an attack to regain control of South Ossetia. Russian forces repelled the attack, drove deep into Georgia, and stayed there for weeks.

Russia still has thousands of troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and has recognized both as independent nations.

Amnesty International has accused both sides of violating international law during the war.

The Associated Press:

Amnesty says all sides in the August conflict may have committed abuses. In its new report, Amnesty says Georgian and Russian forces and militia fighters in the breakaway South Ossetia region should be investigated for war crimes during the conflict.

Amnesty’s John Dalhuisen says there is strong evidence of human rights violations, noting concerns over “indiscriminate attacks by Georgian forces on entering Tskhinvali and then Russian forces in reply.

“Amnesty is also very concerned with the “looting, pillaging and destruction of civilian property essentially by South Ossetian forces and militia groups in aftermath of the conflict,” said Dalhuisen.

The war erupted when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili launched a military operation against separatists in the breakaway province of South Ossetia to bring them under Tbilisi’s control.

Russia responded with overwhelming military force, pushing deep inside Georgia. Dalhuisen says an in-depth investigation needs to take place and recommends an international humanitarian fact-finding commission established under the Geneva convention that both Georgia and Russia agree to.

The New York-based group, Human Rights Watch agrees. It says Georgian and Russian forces used cluster bombs in the conflict and the group’s representative in Tbilisi, Giorgi Gogia, says those bombs that failed to explode have now become de-facto landmines.

“We have called for both sides to provide the strike data to the de-mining organizations to raise awareness and conduct education programs for the civilians that have gone back in the affected areas,” said Gogia. He says Human Rights Watch is also calling on both sides to sign the Cluster Bomb treaty in December.

Professor Sergei Arutiunov, a Caucasus expert at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, says abuses in South Ossetia must be exposed. But, he says, the army also needs the support of trained police forces in the breakaway region.

“Armies are not geared for police work, to maintain order,” he said. “Marauding and criminal activity happens even after a short war.” This “chaos must be rooted out.”

Though the hostilities have ended, human rights groups say there are more than 20,000 ethnic Georgians unable to return to their homes in South Ossetia – with no prospect of doing so in the near future.

VOA News

On November 9, after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev submitted an agreement on the expected 5,000-strong force to the State Duma for approval, Bordyuzha said that the force is to be formed immediately upon the agreement’s ratification by all participating states.

On November 11, he began a working visit to Kazakhstan to discuss the security situation in the CSTO’s zone of responsibility. The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

But experts argue that, as Moscow touts its efforts to strengthen military cooperation under the umbrella of the CIS and the CSTO, Russia is really pursuing its own goal of expanding its military presence and influence in Central Asia.

Under the working title “Creeping Expansion Of Mysterious And Unpredictable China” on one side, and “Concerns About the Aggressive Policies of the United States in the Region” on the other, Russia is strengthening its cooperation in the military-political and military-technical spheres in the framework of such alliances as the CIS and CSTO, especially with the countries of Central Asia.

Bordyuzha said on September 12 that five members of the CSTO — Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — have agreed to dramatically increase the military capabilities of the bloc.

According to Bordyuzha, an international force would be created in Central Asia that “should be capable of repelling any threat from outside.” Units of the unified special rapid-reaction force would be part of such a force. It would be composed of 10 battalions, with added protection of the unified air-defense system. The new structure would be financed by all the participants on an equal basis, but Russia would provide weapons under agreeable conditions.

Following this big announcement, there was a meeting on October 15 of CSTO defense ministers in St. Petersburg, where they discussed questions pertaining to the common air-defense system.

Besides this, in recent years the members of the CSTO have held a number of joint military exercises for their forces. Just this September and October there were two joint military exercises: one in Russia, “Center-2008,” and another in Kazakhstan, “Aldaspan-2008.” A third exercise, “Shield-2008,” is to be held in western Kazakhstan in the coming weeks.

‘Russia Never Left’

According to General Alibek Kasymov, a former Kazakh defense minister and chief of staff, Russia is pursuing a concrete goal — to pull its allies closer and give a signal to the West that military cooperation among CIS states is continuing.

But in the opinion of other experts, all these measures are a clear indication of Russia’s aspirations to expand its military presence and influence in a strategically vital region.

In the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia preserved its position in Central Asia. In particular, it had a large military unit in Turkmenistan (in Mary), in accordance with an agreement between Moscow and Ashgabat under which Russian citizens were serving in the Turkmen Army, and Russian border guards kept watch along the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

During the years of civil war in Tajikistan, several Russian units were based in the country. An elite paratrooper commando unit was stationed in Tajikistan to support the CIS Collective Peacekeeping Force (which included troops from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan).

Moscow-based military expert Vladimir Mukhin says Russia has lost much of its position in Central Asia since then.

But Russia still has troops and bases in Central Asia in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and in Kazakhstan, where Russian troops are based at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (Russia’s space forces) and at the Saryshagan military firing range.

Mukhin believes that for Russia it is expedient to strengthen its military presence in several countries of the region.

“First, it was expedient for Russia to stake out its presence at first in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Khanabad base in Uzbekistan, where earlier strategic bombers were stationed that could reach India, was good air base, a “springboard,” and was for us a very important base,” Mukhin says.

“One problem was Tajikistan where we did not have a large infrastructure and where it was necessary to practically build everything from scratch. It is a different matter when the base is prepared, the Americans fixed it [the Khanabad base] up very well,” he adds. “Secondly, Russia could use, as it did previously, the military base at Mary. A large part of the air defense was deployed there as large air force units.”

Fighting For Influence In Central Asia

Russia wants to regain its previous position in this region on the basis of bilateral agreements, Mukhin says, but the countries of Central Asia are not hurrying to allow the Russian military back in. “Some kinds of agreements exist,” he says. “But as is known, the Uzbeks do not want to host Russian military units. We also cannot deploy anything in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.”

According to Peter Felstead, a military and defense expert from the London-based “Jane’s Defense Weekly,” the energy resources of Central Asia are also attractive to Russia and Moscow will continue to try to make advances into the region.

“I think the one thing you can say is that what happened in Georgia fits a pattern, so it’s all part of a resurgent Russia that believe that they have been sort of wronged on the world stage and want to come back to a position of major-power status,” Felstead says.

“What I would say is that Russia a lot of time has tried to use energy to try and wield its way and extend its influence with its neighbors and certain neighboring countries are almost in a stranglehold from Russia because of their reliance on Russian energy,” he adds. “Where their energy comes from Central Asia, then I think that you will find that they will be moving to secure that because that is what they are using to fuel their resurgence.”

On the other hand, Tajik analyst Marat Mamadshoev says that merely strengthening its military presence in Central Asia doesn’t necessarily mean Russia’s influence there will rise.

“Recently we see the politics of China also, which does not have a military base but which is gradually and persistently advancing its influence in this region and in many other regions,” Mamadshoev says. “Using this example, it seems to me that the use of economic means is the best way to get a foothold in the region.”

All the same, Kasym Bekmukhammad, another independent expert from Dushanbe, says that after the Russia-Georgia conflict in the Caucasus, Russia has found the grounds to expand its presence in Central Asia and strengthen its position in the region. During the existence of the CIS, Russia has strongly warned against the presence of external threats in the Central Asian states.

Bekmukhammad says that so far no one has seen the clear threats Moscow has been warning about, widely read as cross-border terrorism coming from Afghanistan or other regional hot spots, and that Russia is simply pursuing its geopolitical goals in an important region like Central Asia.

Besides that, Bekmukhammad notes hat the experience of the Russian military does not show that Russian troops have played the expected role in resolving internal crises in the countries where they are based. “Russia always takes a passive position and we witnessed such a situation in Kyrgyzstan,” he says.

Here the Tajik analyst is speaking about the passive position of Russia during the Tajik civil war in 1992-97, the Andijon bloodshed in May 2005 and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005, when the regime of Askar Akaev was overthrown.

Radio Free Europe

Pro-Moscow separatist forces had been shelling his hometown of Avnevi, an ethnic-Georgian village inside the breakaway region, pretty much nonstop since the beginning of August until Georgian troops entered the enclave around midnight on August 7-8.

“The war did not start on August 7 for us, it started on August 2,” Kapanadze, who now lives in a shelter for displaced persons in Tbilisi, told RFE/RL’s Georgian Service in a recent interview.

Dozens of eyewitness accounts like Kapanadze’s, collected by RFE/RL correspondents on the ground, contradict recent media reports — most prominently a November 7 article in “The New York Times” — suggesting that Georgia attacked the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, unprovoked on August 7.

Tbilisi has long claimed that in sending troops to South Ossetia, it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

The eyewitness accounts are also consistent with a report, issued on August 5, by a tripartite monitoring group, which included Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) military observers and representatives of Russian peacekeeping forces in the region.

The report, signed by the commander of Russian peacekeepers in the region, General Marat Kulakhmetov, said there was evidence of attacks against several ethnic-Georgian villages in South Ossetia. The report also claims that South Ossetian separatists were using heavy weapons against the Georgian villages, which was prohibited by a 1992 cease-fire agreement.

Much recent media attention — including reports aired by RFE/RL’s Georgian Service as well as the November 7 “New York Times” article — has focused on Tskhinvali and accusations that Georgian forces began bombing the South Ossetian capital with indiscriminate force on the night of August 7-8.

Breaking An Uneasy Peace

Supported by Russia, South Ossetia fought a brutal war to secede from Georgia in the early 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. A 1992 cease-fire ended the fighting and established a peacekeeping contingent comprising Russian, Georgian, and Ossetian forces. The agreement did not resolve the question of South Ossetia’s final status, and it remained formally part of Georgia but enjoyed de facto autonomy.

Prior to the renewed outbreak of armed conflict in August, ethnic Georgians made up just less than one-third of the population of South Ossetia. The region was a checkerboard-like patchwork of Georgian and Ossetian villages that coexisted side-by-side in an uneasy peace.

But that uneasy peace abruptly ended in the beginning of August, when Georgian and separatist-controlled villages in South Ossetia began exchanging gun, mortar, and grenade fire, with each side blaming the other for initiating hostilities.

“The most extensive shelling began on August 7, although our village had been attacked in previous days too,” Gocha Petriashvili, a resident of the ethnic-Georgian village of Nuli, told RFE/RL’s Georgian Service.

He added that the attacks began on August 2 when his neighbor’s home was hit with mortar fire and burned down. “It was a miracle that nobody was killed there. The parents somehow managed to get their 4-month-old baby down from the second floor to the yard,” he said, adding that he also witnessed a minivan carrying women and children come under machine-gun fire.

Petriashvili fled Nuli on August 10, and later learned that his home burned to the ground after being hit with mortar fire.

Another Nuli resident, Bela Chavchavadze, concurs with Petriashvili’s account that the shelling started on August 2 — when the home of a local police officer was bombed, causing it to burn to the ground — and intensified on August 6-7.

“On August 6, in the evening they were shooting and shelling. Around midnight it all stopped but resumed again in the early morning,” Chavchavadze says. “We were lucky to have left the village before the roads were blocked.”

And in the ethnic-Georgian village of Ergneti, which is in the Gori region outside of South Ossetia’s administrative borders in Georgia proper, residents also reported heavy shelling starting in the beginning of August. “Ergneti was bombed before the military confrontation started. In the first days of August there was extensive shelling of the village, many houses have been damaged. A man I know was wounded,” says local resident Temur Tatunashvili.

Fresh Allegations

The tripartite monitoring group also found evidence suggesting that Nuli, Eredvi, Zemo Nikozi, and Zemo Prisi — all ethnic-Georgian villages — had come under attack by separatist forces prior to the full-fledged outbreak of armed conflict on August 7-8.

“Trace of various calibration shells were found on local residential houses in Zemo Nikozi. Bullet holes were found in the roofs of private houses and other buildings of Zemo Nikozi in the vicinity of residential areas,” the report said.

“In the settlements of Nuli, Eredvi, and Zemo Prisi, observers found 82-millimeter fractions on private houses as a result of grenade-launcher attacks. Military observers from the Joint Control Commission witnessed shootings towards Sarabuki, a Georgian peacekeeping post, with 120-millimeter grenade launcher and one 100-millimeter mortar.”

In an article published on November 7, “The New York Times,” however, wrote that “newly available accounts” from military observers from the OSCE “question the long-standing Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively” when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered troops into South Ossetia just before midnight on August 7-8.

The monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belarusian airborne captain, and a Polish civilian, told diplomats at two confidential briefings that Georgia attacked the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali on August 7 “with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire.” The article also said the monitors “were unable to verify that ethnic-Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling into question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.”

Georgian officials have challenged the account. Moscow, meanwhile, has embraced it and asked the OSCE to conduct a broader inquiry into the allegations.

Georgia has long called for an international investigation into the events leading up to the start of the war. EU foreign ministers have sanctioned such an investigation and chose Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, the former head of the UN Mission in Georgia, to head it.

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on November 12 after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, the current OSCE chairman in office, said he would comply with Russia’s request, but also appeared to cast doubt on some of the monitors’ allegations.

Stubb said the small contingent of monitors in Tskhinvali was not in a position to determine how the war started. “It’s not my job to make the judgment on who started the war, or how it actually started,” Stubb said. “The OSCE isn’t an intelligence service. Our instruments are, unfortunately, very limited.”

Unarmed Military Officers In A Couple Of Cars

“The New York Times” cited mostly anonymous OSCE officials in its November 7 story. One official it did quote by name, however, was Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who was deputy head of the OSCE mission in Tbilisi when the war broke out. Grist has also been cited in numerous other media reports critical of Georgia.

OSCE officials in Tbilisi said Grist traveled to Tskhinvali days after Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia and began giving unauthorized interviews to Russian media that were critical of Georgia. Upon returning to Tbilisi, according to the officials, he was reprimanded, had a heated conversation with his superiors, and subsequently resigned from the organization.

Grist could not be reached for comment and the OSCE says it will not comment on personnel matters.

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, OSCE Deputy Spokeswoman Virginie Coulloudon said the organization’s monitors make “patrol reports” from the ground “on a daily basis.” The organization’s reports were distributed to all 56 member states.

“Another level of information is what some of our monitors…experienced during the night of the 7th to the 8th [of August],” Coulloudon said “They were in Tskhinvali. Three OSCE staff members were in the basement of the Tskhinvali office, and they did witness the shelling of Tskhinvali. However, the OSCE is not in a capacity to say who started the war and what happened before the night of [August] 7-8.”

Coulloudon added that the OSCE in South Ossetia consists of just “unarmed military officers in a couple of cars.”

Tbilisi has fed the confusion about the war’s origins. Shortly after Georgian troops entered South Ossetia, Georgian officials cited “restoring constitutional order” in the separatist region as the reason for using force.

Later, Georgia said Russian forces moved into South Ossetia first on August 7, and that Georgia had no choice but to send troops and try to head off the invasion.

Radio Free Europe

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, heading the EU side at a one-day summit in the French resort of Nice, and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev will then fly directly to Washington to join the G20 meeting of top economies on the crisis.

Despite some reservations, EU states agreed on Monday to relaunch talks on a broad partnership pact frozen after Russia’s August military incursion into Western ally Georgia.

They plan to focus on the financial turmoil and the Europeans will air concerns about security of energy supplies from Russia, the bloc’s number one supplier of gas and number two supplier of oil.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the “tonality” of the meeting was more important that concrete outcomes.

“You can’t expect it’s going to be business as usual in 24 hours — you know what is the mood in some of the countries of the European Union,” he told Reuters.

“But everybody thinks that to have a framework in which a relationship can take place is better than not having it.”

He welcomed comments by Medvedev on the eve of the summit in which he spoke of the need to cooperate on the financial crisis and confirmed Russia’s intention to join the World Trade Organization, but on “non-humiliating” terms.

“He has made an effort to be clear on matters that are economic in nature, some of them will help to find common ground …and he was very clear on the WTO.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said ahead of the summit more cooperation was in the interests of both sides and the EU sought a clear signal from Russia.

Medvedev said Russia hoped to see relations pushed forward and he pledged Moscow would remain a reliable energy partner.

“We want transparent relations with all states which buy our energy resources, including those in Europe,” he said on Thursday. “I hope tomorrow we will give an impetus for more intensive talks. We are ready to start as early as tomorrow.”

LACK OF TRUST

EU officials say the summit will not aim for a joint position ahead of the G20 but would see some convergence.

Medvedev said he was working with Europeans on such ideas. “Our positions often coincide, sometimes even in details,” he said. “I am sure in Washington we will be speaking one language.”

The 27-nation EU wants to keep its reliance on Russian supplies growing after disputes between Moscow and transit states disrupted supplies in recent years and Russia’s incursion into Georgia which has stoked tension with the West.

EU officials say Russia’s action in Georgia and Medvedev’s threat to station missiles near EU member Poland have undermined trust. They say the decision to resume talks was based on necessity, not acceptance of Russian actions.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin did little to calm EU unease when he warned on Wednesday Moscow may scrap its Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, Nord Stream, and build liquefaction plants instead if Europe keeps delaying the project.

The pipeline, due to link Russia and Germany, has sparked protests in EU countries such as Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, angered at being shut out of a key gas supply route.

Putin did though offer a concession in a dispute that has held up EU ratification of Russia’s WTO bid. Moscow would delay bringing in prohibitive duties on raw timber exports that threaten industries in Sweden and Finland, he said.

EU, Russia seek to put ties back on track

“We really must move forward… to remove sources of friction,” Mr Sarkozy said at a joint news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

The talks in Nice, in southern France, came just ahead of a global summit in Washington on the financial crisis.

Mr Sarkozy also urged Russia to complete a troop pull-out from Georgia.

“I told Mr Medvedev there will have to be more progress with regard to withdrawing troops,” he said. France hosted the EU-Russia meeting on Friday, as it currently holds the EU presidency.

Under a French-brokered ceasefire deal, Russia withdrew many of its troops following a brief war with Georgia in August. But Georgia says Russia must also withdraw forces from the Akhalgori and Kodori Gorge areas.

The deal said Russia should pull back to positions it held before the war. Russia plans to keep thousands of troops in the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

New security plans

Referring to Russia’s missile deployment threat, Mr Sarkozy called for a European security summit next year under the auspices of the European security body, the OSCE.

“I told President Medvedev how much we are concerned about his declaration [on missiles] and how there should be no deployment in any enclave as long as we have not discussed the new conditions of pan-European security,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy said the summit next year could look at a Russian proposal for a new security architecture in Europe.

The BBC’s Oana Lungescu in Nice says some see the proposal as Moscow’s attempt to gain a greater say in world affairs to the detriment of the US and Nato.

Moscow sees a planned US missile shield in Central Europe as a threat. Within hours of the conclusion of the US presidential election last week, President Medvedev announced plans to site short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, near Poland, to neutralise the US shield.

The US insists the shield – with installations in Poland and the Czech Republic – is a defence against missiles from “rogue” nations, like Iran.

At the summit the EU confirmed that EU-Russia partnership talks, put on hold because of Russia’s military incursion into Georgia, would resume – but no date was set.

Mr Medvedev said that “before signing a special, global treaty on European security, all of us should avoid unilateral steps which affect security in Europe.

“Russia has never taken unilateral steps. All these measures taken by us, including the measures which I announced recently, have been a response to the actions of individual countries in Europe which, without consulting anyone, have agreed on hosting new military systems on their soil.”

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