Georgia X Rússia

[Carlos Mathias]

Engraçado que quando as notícias tem essa direção, os comentários dos defensores da democracia cessam... E olha que até pouco haviam muitos muitos aqui!

[P44]

se calhar a BBC também é controlada pela Máfia Russa, ou pelo FSB....

[Bolovo]

Make love, not war.

[Carlos Mathias]

Huuuuuuum...

[vmonteiro]

se calhar a BBC também é controlada pela Máfia Russa, ou pelo FSB....

Fique tranquilo nosso forista preferido (PT) tirou umas ferias

[Oziris]

Make love, not war.

Que barriguinhas lindas, merecia um filho meu.

[]'s

[P44]

mais dos santos georgianos...aos poucos os podres desta canalha vão-se sabendo

Georgia relied on cluster bombs during war
By Michael Schwirtz

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
MOSCOW: Georgian military forces fired more cluster munitions during the August war with Russia than originally thought, and some of these weapons may have malfunctioned, causing civilian casualties when they fell short of targets and hit Georgian villages, according to new research by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights group.

Georgia has denied the findings, which Human Rights Watch presented at the Convention on Conventional Weapons held in Geneva on Tuesday.

The group found that both Georgia and Russia extensively used cluster munitions during the war. After Georgia launched a massive artillery bombardment against South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgian enclave, Russian invaded large swaths of Georgian territory.

Though Russia endured the brunt of international outrage for its conduct during and after the war, Georgia's actions in the conflict have come under increasing scrutiny, and the new report adds to a growing body of evidence of Georgian atrocities during the fighting.

Cluster bombs, typically anti-personnel weapons which eject dozens of explosive submunitions when detonated, killed as many as 17 civilians during the brief, but bloody, war and injured dozens more, Human Rights Watch said. In addition, many of the weapons on both sides failed, the statement said, scattering unexploded ordinance that has already caused casualties and continues to pose a danger to civilians.

In several Georgian villages researchers from Human Rights Watch said they found wreckage from Israeli-supplied Mk-4 GRAD LAR-160 ground rockets with M85 submunitions used by Georgia, suggesting a "massive technical failure," the report said. The munitions killed at least one civilian and injured two in the Georgian towns of Tirdznisi and Shindisi.

"What was suprising is that the large number of the duds we've found were unexploded," said Giorgi Gogia, a Georgia-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, who worked on the report. "There were so many duds in these fields that it looked like a catastrophic failure or malfunction," he said.

Georgia has admitted to purchasing cluster munitions from Israel and using them during the conflict, though officials insist the weapons were used only against Russian military targets and not in civilian areas. Georgian officials criticized the Human Rights Watch report, saying the government has no information that missiles fired by Georgian forces had somehow hit Georgian villages.

"What we believe was completely misunderstood in the publication was that our cluster ammunition could have harmed the civilian population under Georgian control, which cannot be true," said Kakha Lomaya, the head of Georgia's State Security Council.

Moreover, Lomaya said, Georgian cluster munitions were equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that would disarm any duds, rendering them harmless.

Human Rights Watch disputed the claim.

"We have found dozens and dozens of duds, and none of them had a self-destruct mechanism," Gogia said.

Though researchers found evidence of Russian and Georgian cluster munitions in over a dozen towns and villages in the conflict zone, Human Rights Watch said that Russian weapons caused most of the civilian casualties.

Unlike Georgia, Russia has vehemently denied using cluster munitions during the war, despite strong evidence to the contrary. Human Rights Watch investigators found Russian AO-2.5 RTM submunitions from RBK air-dropped cluster bombs in Georgian villages, according to the report.

And the Dutch Foreign Ministry insists that a Russian cluster bomb killed the Dutch cameraman Stan Storimans and four other people in an attack on the central square in Gori on August 12. In a report released last month, the ministry said that an examination of forensic evidence, video and photographs indicated that a Russia SS-26 rocket loaded with cluster munitions caused the deaths.

The use of cluster munitions has been widely condemned worldwide because of the devastating effects these weapons can have on civilian populations. Unexploded submunitions scattered over broad areas can kill and maim people for years.

Over 100 countries signed a Convention on Cluster Munitions in May this year, vowing to refrain from using, storing and selling cluster munitions. Georgia and Russia have not, and neither have many of the world's heaviest users of cluster bombs - including the United States and Israel.

So far, according to Human Rights Watch, two people have been reported killed and three wounded by Georgian duds since the war ended.

http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=17560617

[P44]

mais...agora do NY Times

pelo menos já 3 conceituadas publicações ocidentais (BBC, International Herald Tribune, NY Times)vieram a publico mostrar que os georgianos não foram os santinhos que alguns extremistas de direita e xenófobos quiseram passar a imagem...

November 7, 2008
Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question

By C. J. CHIVERS and ELLEN BARRY
TBILISI, Georgia — Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression.

Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm.

The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area. The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili’s main justifications for the attack.

Senior Georgian officials contest these accounts, and have urged Western governments to discount them. “That information, I don’t know what it is and how it is confirmed,” said Giga Bokeria, Georgia’s deputy foreign minister. “There is such an amount of evidence of continuous attacks on Georgian-controlled villages and so much evidence of Russian military buildup, it doesn’t change in any case the general picture of events.”

He added: “Who was counting those explosions? It sounds a bit peculiar.”

The Kremlin has embraced the monitors’ observations, which, according to a written statement from Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, reflect “the actual course of events prior to Georgia’s aggression.” He added that the accounts “refute” allegations by Tbilisi of bombardments that he called mythical.

The monitors were members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s.

The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belorussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both.

Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian, and were not disputed by the O.S.C.E.’s mission in Tbilisi, which was provided with a written summary of the observations.

Mr. Saakashvili, who has compared Russia’s incursion into Georgia to the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and skepticism about his judgment from Western governments.

The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired. Georgia’s army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its brigades, seized and looted their bases, captured their equipment and roamed the country’s roads at will. Villages that Georgia vowed to save were ransacked and cleared of their populations by irregular Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack forces, and several were burned to the ground.

Massing of Weapons

According to the monitors, an O.S.C.E. patrol at 3 p.m. on Aug. 7 saw large numbers of Georgian artillery and grad rocket launchers massing on roads north of Gori, just south of the enclave.

At 6:10 p.m., the monitors were told by Russian peacekeepers of suspected Georgian artillery fire on Khetagurovo, an Ossetian village; this report was not independently confirmed, and Georgia declared a unilateral cease-fire shortly thereafter, about 7 p.m.

During a news broadcast that began at 11 p.m., Georgia announced that Georgian villages were being shelled, and declared an operation “to restore constitutional order” in South Ossetia. The bombardment of Tskhinvali started soon after the broadcast.

According to the monitors, however, no shelling of Georgian villages could be heard in the hours before the Georgian bombardment. At least two of the four villages that Georgia has since said were under fire were near the observers’ office in Tskhinvali, and the monitors there likely would have heard artillery fire nearby.

Moreover, the observers made a record of the rounds exploding after Georgia’s bombardment began at 11:35 p.m. At 11:45 p.m., rounds were exploding at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between impacts, they noted.

At 12:15 a.m. on Aug. 8, Gen. Maj. Marat M. Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the enclave, reported to the monitors that his unit had casualties, indicating that Russian soldiers had come under fire.

By 12:35 a.m. the observers had recorded at least 100 heavy rounds exploding across Tskhinvali, including 48 close to the observers’ office, which is in a civilian area and was damaged.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that by morning on Aug. 8 two Russian soldiers had been killed and five wounded. Two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they work with Georgia’s military, said that whatever Russia’s behavior in or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia’s artillery or rockets struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable. This clear risk, they said, made Georgia’s attack dangerous and unwise.

Senior Georgia officials, a group with scant military experience and personal loyalties to Mr. Saakashvili, have said that much of the damage to Tskhinvali was caused in combat between its soldiers and separatists, or by Russian airstrikes and bombardments in its counterattack the next day. As for its broader shelling of the city, Georgia has told Western diplomats that Ossetians hid weapons in civilian buildings, making them legitimate targets.

“The Georgians have been quite clear that they were shelling targets — the mayor’s office, police headquarters — that had been used for military purposes,” said Matthew J. Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state and one of Mr. Saakashvili’s vocal supporters in Washington.

Those claims have not been independently verified, and Georgia’s account was disputed by Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who was the senior O.S.C.E. representative in Georgia when the war broke out. Mr. Grist said that he was in constant contact that night with all sides, with the office in Tskhinvali and with Wing Commander Stephen Young, the retired British military officer who leads the monitoring team.

“It was clear to me that the attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation,” Mr. Grist said. “The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town.”

Mr. Grist has served as a military officer or diplomat in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Yugoslavia. In August, after the Georgian foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, who has no military experience, assured diplomats in Tbilisi that the attack was measured and discriminate, Mr. Grist gave a briefing to diplomats from the European Union that drew from the monitors’ observations and included his assessments. He then soon resigned under unclear circumstances.

A second briefing was led by Commander Young in October for military attachés visiting Georgia. At the meeting, according to a person in attendance, Commander Young stood by the monitors’ assessment that Georgian villages had not been extensively shelled on the evening or night of Aug. 7. “If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn’t,” Commander Young said, according to the person who attended. “They heard only occasional small-arms fire.”

The O.S.C.E turned down a request by The Times to interview Commander Young and the monitors, saying they worked in sensitive jobs and would not be publicly engaged in this disagreement.

Grievances and Exaggeration

Disentangling the Russian and Georgian accounts has been complicated. The violence along the enclave’s boundaries that had occurred in recent summers was more widespread this year, and in the days before Aug. 7 there had been shelling of Georgian villages. Tensions had been soaring.

Each side has fresh lists of grievances about the other, which they insist are decisive. But both sides also have a record of misstatement and exaggeration, which includes circulating casualty estimates that have not withstood independent examination. With the international standing of both Russia and Georgia damaged, the public relations battle has been intensive.

Russian military units have been implicated in destruction of civilian property and accused by Georgia of participating with Ossetian militias in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Russia and South Ossetia have accused Georgia of attacking Ossetian civilians.

But a critical and as yet unanswered question has been what changed for Georgia between 7 p.m. on Aug 7, when Mr. Saakashvili declared a cease-fire, and 11:30 p.m., when he says he ordered the attack. The Russian and Ossetian governments have said the cease-fire was a ruse used to position rockets and artillery for the assault.

That view is widely held by Ossetians. Civilians repeatedly reported resting at home after the cease-fire broadcast by Mr. Saakashvili. Emeliya B. Dzhoyeva, 68, was home with her husband, Felix, 70, when the bombardment began. He lost his left arm below the elbow and suffered burns to his right arm and torso. “Saakashvili told us that nothing would happen,” she said. “So we all just went to bed.”

Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale military attack was necessary, as Mr. Saakashvili insists.

Georgia has released telephone intercepts indicating that a Russian armored column apparently entered the enclave from Russia early on the Aug. 7, which would be a violation of the peacekeeping rules. Georgia said the column marked the beginning of an invasion. But the intercepts did not show the column’s size, composition or mission, and there has not been evidence that it was engaged with Georgian forces until many hours after the Georgian bombardment; Russia insists it was simply a routine logistics train or troop rotation.

Unclear Accounts of Shelling

Interviews by The Times have found a mixed picture on the question of whether Georgian villages were shelled after Mr. Saakashvili declared the cease-fire. Residents of the village of Zemo Nigozi, one of the villages that Georgia has said was under heavy fire, said they were shelled from 6 p.m. on, supporting Georgian statements.

In two other villages, interviews did not support Georgian claims. In Avnevi, several residents said the shelling stopped before the cease-fire and did not resume until roughly the same time as the Georgian bombardment. In Tamarasheni, some residents said they were lightly shelled on the evening of Aug. 7, but felt safe enough not to retreat to their basements. Others said they were not shelled until Aug 9.

With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the O.S.C.E. observations put the United States in a potentially difficult position. The United States, Mr. Saakashvili’s principal source of international support, has for years accepted the organization’s conclusions and praised its professionalism. Mr. Bryza refrained from passing judgment on the conflicting accounts.

“I wasn’t there,” he said, referring to the battle. “We didn’t have people there. But the O.S.C.E. really has been our benchmark on many things over the years.”

The O.S.C.E. itself, while refusing to discuss its internal findings, stood by the accuracy of its work but urged caution in interpreting it too broadly. “We are confident that all O.S.C.E. observations are expert, accurate and unbiased,” Martha Freeman, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. “However, monitoring activities in certain areas at certain times cannot be taken in isolation to provide a comprehensive account.”

C.J. Chivers reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting from Tbilisi, and Matt Siegel from Tskhinvali, Georgia.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world ... nted=print

[Rui Elias Maltez]

No Tribunal de Haia, não há lá um assento para o Saskashvili?

É que a mim, parece que só têm lugar lá para os sérvios.

[Oziris]

Cara mais safado, esse tal de Saakashvili.

[]'s

[Túlio]

Esperem só o PT voltaire, ó pá...

[Oziris]

07/11/2008 - 13h20
Milhares se reúnem em manifestação contra presidente da Geórgia

Por Margarita Antidze e Matt Robinson

TBILISI, Geórgia (Reuters) - Mais de 10 mil georgianos realizaram nesta sexta-feira uma manifestação contra o presidente do país, Mikheil Saakashvili, intensificando as pressões sofridas pelo governo dele depois da esmagadora derrota para a Rússia numa guerra recente.

O protesto organizado na capital Tbilisi marcou o aniversário de um ano de ações repressivas adotadas contra manifestantes da oposição, quando a polícia usou balas de borracha, bombas de gás lacrimogêneo e canhões de água para colocar fim a dias de mobilização do lado de fora do Parlamento.

Apoiado pelo Ocidente, Saakashvili subiu ao poder em 2003, em meio à "Revolução Rosa", prometendo consolidar a democracia na ex-República soviética. A oposição diz, no entanto, que o dirigente ficou muito longe do que se esperava dele.

Governos do Ocidente, entre os quais o maior aliado de Saakashvili, os EUA, continuam a pedir por mais independência para o Poder Judiciário e liberdade para os meios de comunicação e os políticos oposicionistas.

"Estamos iniciando uma nova onda de confrontação civil e não vamos desistir até que novas eleições sejam convocadas", afirmou à multidão de manifestantes Kakha Kukava, um líder do Partido Conservador (oposição).

Os que discursaram no evento exigiram eleições parlamentares e presidenciais no começo de 2009. E repetiram acusações sobre ter havido fraude no pleito anterior.

As vozes de descontentamento tornaram-se mais frequentes desde a guerra de cinco dias contra a Rússia, em agosto, quando o governo russo enviou tanques e soldados para rechaçar uma ação militar da Geórgia na região separatista da Ossétia do Sul. O governo georgiano tentava então retomar o controle sobre aquela área.

"Saakashvili deveria renunciar", afirmou o aposentado Vakhtang Dolidze. "Ele foi eleito pelo povo e trouxe vergonha para nós ao perder territórios na guerra."

Diplomatas e analistas do Ocidente reconhecem que a popularidade do presidente parece ter sido abalada. Mas advertem que o descontentamento pode aprofundar-se à medida que a economia acusar o golpe da guerra perdida e da crise financeira global.

'LIÇÃO AMARGA'

Os adversários de Saakashvili dizem que, ao lançar o ataque contra a Ossétia do Sul, que havia expulsado as forças georgianas dali no começo da década de 90, o presidente atirou o país em uma guerra que não poderia vencer e nem sustentar.

O Exército foi derrotado, o governo russo reconheceu como países independentes as duas regiões separatistas da Geórgia e milhares de georgianos expulsos de suas casas pelo conflito continuam sem lar neste momento em que o inverno aproxima-se.

A manifestação de sexta-feira saiu do Parlamento e chegou ao palácio presidencial, onde os líderes dela entregaram suas demandas.

Dezenas de milhares protestaram durante dias em novembro passado. O governo então mobilizou a polícia e invadiu o principal canal de TV da oposição, a Imedi, tirando-a do ar.

Mas os adversários do governo continuam divididos. Um dos principais partidos oposicionistas, o dos cristãos-democratas, realizou sua própria manifestação do lado de fora da sede da Imedi.

O líder dessa legenda, Giorgi Targamadze, disse que os fatos ocorridos um ano atrás "debelaram as ilusões de que um governo galgado ao poder por meio da violência conseguiria fazer bem ao país."

Ciente de sua situação no pós-guerra, Saakashvili prometeu realizar reformas amplas a fim de fortalecer o Parlamento e a independência do Judiciário e dos meios de comunicação. No entanto, alguns diplomatas do Ocidente continuam céticos.

Respondendo a comentários feitos pelo dirigente na semana passada, o presidente do Parlamento, David Bakradze, disse na sexta-feira que a violência do ano passado havia sido "uma lição muito amarga e muito importante para todos nós".

[]'s

[P44]

No Tribunal de Haia, não há lá um assento para o Saskashvili?

É que a mim, parece que só têm lugar lá para os sérvios.

no dia em que lá meterem o patrão dele, o W....

[Oziris]

Boa P44.

[]'s

[Carlos Mathias]

A razão está com quem vence, já diz um velho ditado.