Russian troops have warned that they intend to push further into western Georgia, Georgian officials claimed Sunday, as an increasingly violent territorial dispute in the former Soviet state threatened to spiral into a major international conflict.
The warning came after Georgian troops began withdrawing from South Ossetia, a breakaway region where military action by Tbilisi last week triggered a full scale military clash with Russia that some say has left hundreds dead.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said on Sunday Russian forces plan to move into the city of Zugdidi, which is beyond the border of the second Georgian restive province of Abkhazia. White House Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Jeffrey said the United States was urgently looking into the report, saying that it would be a very serious escalation for Russia to move into Georgia beyond the Abkhazia region. He said the US has made clear that "if the disproportionate and dangerous escalation on the Russian side continues, that this will have a significant long-term impact on US-Russian relations."
The Georgian Foreign Ministry said Georgian troops have begun observing a cease-fire in South Ossetia in compliance with an order from President Mikhail Saakashvili. The ministry said Sunday it was ready to start immediate negotiations with Russia on a ceasefire and ending hostilities.
The US presented a UN Security Council resolution later on Sunday that condemned Russian military action against Georgia as unacceptable, a spokesman for the US delegation to the UN told Reuters.
The first major US foreign policy crisis of the presidential campaign saw Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama join in condemnation of Russian attacks on neighboring Georgia, with McCain warning the Kremlin of long-term consequences and Obama calling for immediate mediation.
Russia, nevertheless, expanded its bombing campaign Sunday against US-allied Georgia, targeting the country's capital for the first time even though Georgia said it had pulled out of South Ossetia, as Moscow has demanded.
Earlier Saturday, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet told the UN Security Council that the Abkhaz authorities had asked him to withdraw UN military observers, known as UNOMIG, from the Upper Kodori Valley in Abkhazia but had declined to give him a reason.
Growing concerns over the conflict have threatened to spill over Georgia's borders, with Ukraine saying it might ban Russia's fleet from Crimea bases after it mobilized off the coast of Abkhazia, another breakaway region. Georgia said overnight, Russia had landed 4,000 troops by sea in Abkhazia.
Abkhaz leader Sergei Bagapsh said he had sent 1,000 troops to the disputed Kodori Gorge and mobilized reservists. "We are ready to act independently," he told reporters. "We are ready to enforce order and go further if there is resistance from the Georgian side." In a statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was profoundly concerned over mounting tensions in Abkhazia.
"Russia's actions in South Ossetia are totally legitimate," Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, visiting an adjacent region of Russia to which thousands of refugees have fled. Putin said Georgia's bid to join the Western alliance NATO -- anathema to Moscow -- was part of the problem.
Underlining his paramount role in the Russian leadership, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cut short his visit to the Beijing Olympics and flew on Saturday to a field hospital in North Ossetia, visiting wounded troops and evacuees, and denouncing what he termed Georgia's crimes against its own people. Russian television later showed Putin briefing President Dmitry Medvedev at the Kremlin on the trip. Medvedev, who has taken a back seat in the handling of the crisis, said little and looked uncomfortable as Putin expounded at length on the situation, detailing what needed to be done.
The United Nations, which has international monitors in the area, had warned of a possible second front opening in the Georgia-Russia conflict, with Russia already pushing Georgian forces from breakaway South Ossetia. Georgia has police stationed in the gorge, protecting a parallel pro-Tbilisi Abkhazian government. Like South Ossetia, Abkhazia broke away for Georgian control in the early 1990s.
The conflict in the heart of the Caucasus has raised alarm in the West, which is vying for influence with Russia over crucial oil and gas supply routes in the region. Russia is rankled by Georgia's pro-Western policies and its drive for NATO membership.
Russia bombed a military airfield outside the Georgian capital early on Sunday and Russian warships had arrived at Georgia's Black Sea coast, the RIA news agency quoted a Russian navy source as saying. Interfax agency said the naval force would stop weapons landing by sea. But RIA-Novosti news agency quoted a defense source as saying Russia had no plans to mount a blockade. "A naval blockade means war with Georgia," the source told RIA. "We are not at war with Georgia." Russia's Nagovitsyn also denied Russian forces had hit any civilian targets during air raids and said they had only struck military units.
Russian warships earlier said to be near Georgian waters on Sunday put into Novorossiisk, a Russian Black Sea port to the north, the Russian navy said. "I hereby confirm that the Moskva and the Smetlivy have come into the port of Novorossiisk," Igor Dygalo, navy spokesman and aide to the naval commander, said by telephone. News agencies had earlier quoted naval sources as saying that the Moskva, flagship for Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and the Smetlivy were in waters by Russia's border with Georgia.
Analysts say Russia is trying to assert its authority in the former Soviet Union territories, where it claims many people have greater allegiance to Moscow than to Western-leaning Tbilisi, a US ally vying for NATO membership.
Russia on Sunday accused Western countries and media of a biased pro-Georgian position in the conflict in South Ossetia and said this might hamper future relations with Moscow. "Western countries behaved strangely in the first hours of aggression towards South Ossetia; they were silent," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told a news conference. "This raises very serious questions about sincerity and their attitude towards our country and will of course be taken into account in the future when we hold talks and talk about global issues," Karasin said. Karasin stated that the US criticism irked Moscow. "Our position is of course negative. It will of course be expressed when our minister [Sergei Lavrov] speaks on the phone with Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice," he said. Karasin also accused foreign media of an anti-Russian bias.
On another development, European Union foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the situation in South Ossetia, a spokesman for the French EU presidency said on Sunday. Georgia called for a ceasefire on Saturday after Russian bombers widened an offensive to force back Georgian troops seeking control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
France urged Russia on Saturday to accept the ceasefire offer and has proposed a three-point plan to end the fighting, including a withdrawal of forces to their previous positions. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the "EU could send a stabilization mission on condition that the actors of that drama cool down their emotions and stop escalating the conflict." "It seems the EU would be a less abrasive partner and peace-keeping force than, for instance, NATO and a more effective one than the UN," Sikorski was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency in Warsaw. Sikorski said he had had signals from France and the German foreign ministry that the EU would be ready to play a stabilizing role in the region.
Source: Zaman
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