NATO enters Russia-Georgia conflict

[december]

Sat, 25 Aug 2007

Brussels news agencies have announced that NATO aims to use radar records, which could confirm the violation of Georgia's airspace by Russia.

NATO's intervention happened after Georgia's claims that Russian combat planes crossed its borders again on Thursday.

The news has had widespread reaction in Georgia, and Georgian officials are considering it as NATO's support of the mentioned allegations.

Russian authorities told French and German diplomats on Friday that Georgia's claim of a Russian plane firing a missile to its territory was a ploy designed to further damage the already strained relations with Moscow and draw the country closer to NATO.

NATO fears that the missile clash between the two countries may endanger the geopolitical balance in the Caucasus region.

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=20614&sectionid=351020602

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[december]

Georgian police looking for downed plane in Kodori

25/ 08/ 2007

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TBILISI, August 25 (RIA Novosti) - A special group of Georgia's Interior Ministry left for the Kodori Gorge Saturday to look for a plane allegedly downed in the area after Georgian airspace violation August 21.

The Rustavi-2 TV company reported Friday citing eyewitnesses that an aircraft could have fallen near the Lata village, but locals said they were unable to approach the site due to complicated weather conditions.

A Georgian Interior Ministry representative said Georgia fired on a plane that allegedly violated the country's airspace August 21, but an aide to the Russian Air Force commander called Tbilisi's statements a provocation, denying any flights by Russian planes at that time.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry delivered a note of protest to the Russian Foreign Ministry Wednesday claiming Georgian airspace had been violated from Russia the day before. Russia has denied the claim.

Georgia has also accused the Russian Air Force of violating its airspace and dropping a missile on a village August 6, a claim Russia has also denied.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070825/74551058.html



Some reports claim that it was an American airplane that was shot down.

[december]

Mikheil Saakashvili (Georgian: მიხეილ სააკაშვილი) (born December 21, 1967) is a Georgian politician and the current President of Georgia. He succeeded, on January 25, 2004, Nino Burjanadze, who acted as a president after President Eduard Shevardnadze stepped down in Georgia's 2003 bloodless Rose Revolution, led by Saakashvili and his major political allies, Burjanadze and Zurab Zhvania.

Mikheil Saakashvili was born in Tbilisi, in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union, to a Georgian intelligentsia family. His father, Nikoloz Saakashvili, is a physician who still practices medicine in Tbilisi and directs a local Balneological Center. His mother, Giuli Alasania, is a historian who lectures at Tbilisi State University.

Saakashvili graduated from the School of International Law of the Kiev State University (Ukraine) in 1992. He briefly worked as a human rights officer for the interim State Council of Georgia following the overthrow of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia before receiving a fellowship from the United States State Department (via the Edmund S. Muskie/FREEDOM Support Act (FSA) Graduate Fellowship Program).

He received an LLM from Columbia Law School in 1994 and Doctor of Laws degree from The George Washington University Law School the following year. In 1995, he also received a diploma from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

After graduation, while working in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in early 1995, Saakashvili was approached by Zurab Zhvania, an old friend from Georgia who was working on behalf of President Eduard Shevardnadze to recruit talented young Georgians to enter politics. He stood in the December 1995 elections along with Zhvania, and both men won seats in parliament, standing for the Union of Citizens of Georgia, Shevardnadze's party.

Mikheil Saakashvili - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Saakashvili's pragmatic divorce

27/ 08/ 2007


MOSCOW. (Boris Makarenko for RIA Novosti) - It is high time to stop believing assurances of friendship. While relations between people in the former Soviet republics remain very friendly, government policy follows a different logic.

Even during the Cold War, we had TV bridges with the United States. Vladimir Pozner and Phil Donahue hosted talk shows where people swore to eternal friendship and discussed all kind of personal issues. This did little to solve international problems but at least improved the general atmosphere.

Now despite mutual declarations of friendship, negative emotions between Russia and Georgia are running higher than ever. Who needs this escalation of hostility? Mr. Saakashvili and his team need tension with Russia for a simple reason: He was elected as the president of hope. Georgian people believed his promise to resolve long-standing domestic problems, including territorial integrity.

Georgia wanted to blame its failures on some evil enemy, and Russia was a perfect choice. This is why Georgia is provoking Russia. I think this is the most important reason, while Saakashvili's flirtation with the United States and the West as a whole is only a consequence. This position explains why Saakashvili is looking for support in the West rather than Moscow. Having chosen to go for the current round of escalation, he has cut it fine. He had no stake in gradual normalization of relations between our countries after the outbursts of the past fall. His idea was to get more and more arguments for the West in a bid to speed up the review of Georgia's application for NATO's membership.

It is also to Georgia's advantage that right now the West is not happy with Moscow for a number of reasons, such as the aggravation of discord on the missile defense issue in Europe, the Litvinenko case, energy domination and an obstinate stance on Kosovo's status. The West was critical of Russia before, when during one of the crises Russian officials and law-enforcement bodies were clumsily extraditing Georgian citizens or instructing teachers in Moscow schools to compile lists of students with Georgian names. This was appalling and the Western reaction was appropriate. Saakashvili was perfectly right in assuming that in any dispute between Moscow and Tbilisi, Moscow would be presumed guilty.

READ MORE -

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070827/75073584.html


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