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

Both South Ossetian troops and Russian forces in the area denied involvement. No-one was injured in the incident.

President Mikhail Saakashvili and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski were planning to visit victims of fighting between Georgia and Russia in August.

The area has seen much cross-border gunfire since a ceasefire was agreed.

Georgia has been marking the fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution that swept Mr Saakashvili to power.

‘Shelling’ denied

A witness travelling with Mr Saakashvili told Reuters news agency that uniformed South Ossetians had fired warning shots after the convoy came within 30m of a checkpoint at the de facto border.

Mr Saakashvili said the incident should serve as a “reminder” to European politicians that Russia was “brazenly violating” an EU-brokered ceasefire between Tbilisi and Moscow.

“Twenty-first Century occupiers, who have no legal, moral or other right to be there and oppress people, are stationed in the heart of Georgia,” he said during a joint press conference with Mr Kaczynski.

Mr Kaczynski said it was not clear if the gunfire was aimed at the motorcade or into the air.

He added that he had travelled to the remote checkpoint because he wanted to see whether Russian troops were in places they should not be according to the terms of the ceasefire agreement.

Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia denied firing on the convoy.

“The claims that Russian servicemen were implicated in the shelling of the cortege do not correspond with reality,” a Russian spokesman was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Russian state media also reported South Ossetian denials.

“The South Ossetian side has nothing to do with it,” said South Ossetian spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva told RIA Novosti.

The purpose of the presidential visit was to underline the precarious situation in which many Georgians find themselves three-and-a-half-months after the war, says the BBC’s Tom Esslemont in Tbilisi.

Now President Saakashvili is using the incident as a means to highlight what he says is the need for continued support from the European Union and the United States, our correspondent adds.

Muted celebrations

Mr Saakashvili had earlier called for Georgians to unite against a “dangerous threat” from Russia as they did in the bloodless revolution of November 2003.

Anniversary celebrations this year have been muted after the August conflict with Russia.

The only planned event is a concert at Tbilisi’s ornate opera house, and opposition groups have held rallies calling for Mr Saakashvili’s resignation.

One of Mr Saakashvili’s former allies, Nino Burjanadze, has used the anniversary to launch a new opposition party, accusing the president of authoritarianism.

On 7 August, Georgia tried to retake South Ossetia by force after a series of lower-level clashes with Russian-backed rebels.

Russia launched a counter-attack and the Georgian troops were ejected from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second breakaway region, days later.

BBC NEWS

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

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

“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.”

BBC NEWS

They left behind a nearly deserted village, whose remaining residents are afraid to come out onto the streets for fear of attracting the attention of Ossetian soldiers patrolling the area. Russian troops continued to withdraw from the main checkpoint at the western edge of Perevi, leaving Ossetians in charge of a tense population.

Darejan Bakradze, 50, removed most of her valuables from Perevi on Monday morning, but returned in the afternoon to look after her mother-in-law. Passing the checkpoint, she grew pale and shaky at the sight of Ossetian soldiers.

“I want the Russians to come back,” Bakradadze said. “They were perfect people.”

European monitors urged both sides to remain calm on a day marked by tension along the boundary with South Ossetia. Two Georgian policemen were killed outside the village of Dvani when a remote-controlled mine exploded near their car, according to Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry. When a patrol arrived to investigate, a second mine exploded, wounding three more policemen, he said.

Ambassador Hansjörg Haber, head of the EU monitoring mission, called the attack “an unacceptable breach of the Sarkozy-Medvedev agreement.” He was referring to the peace deal brokered by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and endorsed Sept. 8 by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, after the brief war between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“Today’s attack risks escalating the still-tense situation along the administrative boundary lines,” Haber said Monday. “We repeat our call on all sides to prevent further provocations.”

The South Ossetian interior minister, Valeri Valiyev, said his forces were not involved. “It is Georgian territory,” he said. “What happens there has nothing to do with us.”

Though no violence has occurred in Perevi, home to about 1,000 ethnic Georgians, it was the focus of angry rhetoric Monday from Tbilisi and Tskhinvali, the separatist capital. Both sides claim it is on their territory. The European Union said in a statement Saturday that it is “clearly” on the Georgian side of the line.

Ibragim Gaseyev, the South Ossetian deputy minister of defense, said the village has belonged to South Ossetia “for countless centuries,” and promised to “give an adequate answer to any provocative act by the Georgian side on the territory of our republic.”

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia said his country would protect the village.

“We will do everything not to yield to the occupants’ provocations,” Saakashvili said Monday. “We must understand that Georgia began a hard and long fight for the liberation of its lands. And in this fight we must act together with our partners.”

Irina Gagloyeva, a spokesman for the South Ossetian government, said that Perevi was not controlled by Tskhinvali before the war, but that it had become necessary to protect it because Georgians “are trying to create tension here.” She said its residents were friendly to South Ossetia, and “have more than once applied for citizenship” in the enclave.

But Georgians in Perevi said they were frightened. The school has shut down, and most of the women and children have left. Alik Dzhokhadze, 24, said he and his friends were toasting the withdrawal of Russians when Ossetian soldiers entered the village, shooting in the air. Dzhokhadze said he had been hiding in his house for two days.

Lomauridze Zina, 48, had watched many of her neighbors leave the village and gathered for comfort with several families who remain. She said she did not want to leave for fear that her house would be robbed.

Violence has been reported from both sides in recent days. Last Thursday, the South Ossetian authorities reported that a villager, Oleg Gigolayev, was fatally shot by a sniper from the Georgian side of the line. The Georgian authorities denied any involvement.

International Herald Tribune

On Sept. 1, the European Union froze talks with Russia on a strategic partnership agreement until Russian troops withdrew to positions they held before Aug. 7, the day hostilities broke out in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia. The decision was presented as a rare and bracing show of European unity.

Monday’s decision to resume talks was a clear acknowledgment of how much Europe and Russia need each other economically, especially as the global financial crisis reorders priorities, foreign ministers and analysts said. Among the issues expected to be discussed when talks resume are energy, trade, and cooperation on security and combating terrorism.

Russia supplies a considerable portion of Europe’s energy needs, and many Europeans fear that makes them vulnerable to Kremlin pressure. Russia, meanwhile, needs the earnings from energy exports.

Improved relations with Russia, a member of the Group of 8, may help broader European objectives of reshaping global financial structures.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds the presidency of the European Union, will meet his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, in Nice, France, on Friday before both head to a meeting on the global economy in Washington.

France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, conceded that there was some doubt about whether Moscow had met all conditions of the agreement to end the Georgia conflict that was laboriously negotiated by France. But, he added, the fact that 26 out of 27 nations agreed to resume talks — Lithuania was the only dissenter — was “not bad” as a barometer of European unity.

Both Lithuania and Poland have taken a tough line on relations with Russia, and domestic opinion there hardened last week when Moscow threatened to place missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders both countries.

Mr. Kouchner said that some areas adjacent to South Ossetia that were occupied “legitimately or illegitimately by Russian troops” should be discussed in Geneva, where talks on the future of the region have begun, if haltingly. He added that the concessions offered by Moscow, including the withdrawal of many Russian troops and Russian participation in the Geneva talks, were sufficient to merit a return to the negotiating table.

Russia still maintains troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region in Georgia, both of which it has recognized as independent states.

Because the talks with Russia were postponed rather than formally suspended, they can be resumed without the support of all 27 European Union members. Mr. Kouchner and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European commissioner for external relations, made it clear on Monday that Lithuania’s objections were not sufficient to stop resumption.

Britain and Poland, which initially took a tough line on relations with Russia, also supported new talks. The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said the move put Poland in the “mainstream of the E.U.”

Nicu Popescu, a research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said it was “clear that the financial crisis is more important for everyone — the E.U. and Russia — than the crisis in Georgia.”

Alexander Stubb, Finland’s foreign minister, agreed. “Realpolitik has influenced this,” he said. “It is in Europe’s interests to restart talks.”

NYTimes.com

Twelve people were killed in Thursday’s attack in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. Officials believe one of them was a female suicide bomber.

The device exploded as the minibus stopped near a busy market.

North Ossetia has, like neighbouring Ingushetia and Chechnya, suffered sporadic violence from militant groups.

While Chechen rebels have used suicide bombing in the past, the tactic has not been used much in recent years in Russia.

Students hit

The explosion happened at about 1415 local time (1115 GMT) on Thursday, as passengers were getting off the packed minibus, Russian officials say.

“As of now, 11 people have died. All have been identified,” local government health minister Vladimir Lekoyev told the AFP news agency, adding that this figure did not include the suspected bomber.

An investigator with the prosecutor’s office told AFP that they were trying to identify the severed head of a woman, suspected of being the bomber.

“We are trying to create a photo-fit. All that’s left is the head,” the official said.

A video camera in the square showed the explosion occurred as a woman was boarding the bus, he added.

Some 35 people remained in hospital on Friday morning, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

They included a girl said to be in a life-threatening state.

Many of the injured are young students who were on their way home when the blast occurred, the agency said.

So far nobody has claimed responsibility for the explosion.

North Ossetia was the scene of the Beslan school siege in 2004, when pro-Chechen militants seized schoolchildren and teachers. It ended with more than 300 people dead after a bungled assault by Russian troops.

Neighbouring Ingushetia suffers almost daily shoot-outs and explosions.

The Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia – scene of a brief war between Russia and Georgia in August – also borders on North Ossetia. Thousands of Russian troops remain in South Ossetia.

BBC NEWS

Representive Anvar Azimov said Georgia was engaging in military activities in areas bordering on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Interfax news agency reported Saturday.

“Several hundred servicemen of the Georgian Interior Ministry, including special task forces and sharpshooters, have been deployed in the village of Variani, Kvenatkotsa, Sagolasheni and Kheltubani,” he said.

He said the number of Georgian observation posts along its border of the South Ossetian border exceeds the earlier-promised level of 10 posts.

“Russia is concerned over the continuing build-up of Georgian military and police presence in areas adjoining South Ossetia and Abkhazia and growing provocations on the part of Georgia,” Azimov said.

“We again want to draw the Permanent Council’s attention to signs of destabilization in security areas around South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the Russian peacekeepers pulled out,” he added.

Russia decries Georgian military buildup – UPI.com