.France Presses for European Peace Monitors in Georgia
BRUSSELS — France sought Wednesday to unite the 26 other nations in the European Union behind the accord brokered with Russia to end the war in Georgia, urging that monitors be dispatched to the Caucasus to help uphold the truce between Georgian and Russian forces.
The sudden eruption of war in Georgia last week bared divisions within Europe over a resurgent Russia and Georgia’s pursuit of NATO membership. Georgia has cast itself as engaged in a lonely struggle to maintain democracy in Russia’s backyard.
The ministers appeared to be edging closer to an agreement on sending peacekeepers to the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia to monitor the fragile truce, which Georgian officials claimed Russia had already violated. During their meeting — an emergency session precipitated by the Caucasus crisis — the European Union’s 27 foreign ministers made contradictory statements about whether to punish Russia for its military strikes on Georgian territory and skirted awkward issues like Georgia’s push for fast-track NATO membership or the future status of South Ossetia.
Several ministers said they backed the French proposal for a European presence on the ground.
“The idea of having monitors — what you call peacekeeping troops, I wouldn’t call them that — but European controllers, monitors, facilitators, yes, yes and yes,” Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France told reporters at the start of the meeting. “That is how Europe should be on the ground.” The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and his British counterpart, David Miliband, expressed their support for the idea.
Any peacekeeping presence will require Russian and Georgian assent to be effective. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which helped the European Union broker the deal to end the fighting, has been responsible for monitoring South Ossetia, while the United Nations has been the monitoring presence in Abkhazia. Both enclaves have been in dispute with Georgia since the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union ignited old ethnic and other feuds.
Mr. Kouchner, who accompanied President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on his mission to broker a peace agreement in Moscow on Tuesday, said he was convinced that Russia would accept a European presence. He did not rule out Russian troops taking part.
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden, who visited Georgia on behalf of the Council of Europe — a grouping of 47 nations that promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law — cast doubt on whether Moscow would allow European monitors into zones that it had held or captured.
“There are no signs of the Russians letting in anyone else,” he said, according to Reuters. “I don’t really see it happening — at the moment the Russians are firmly in control.”
Mr. Miliband said the European Union should decide next month “whether or not, and how” to continue talks on closer ties with Moscow. He noted that the Group of 7 major industrialized powers had been coordinating their response to the Georgia crisis without involving Russia.
Mr. Sarkozy’s diplomatic success in Moscow and Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, was trumpeted by friendly French media on Wednesday.
The daily Le Figaro, which regularly praises Mr. Sarkozy’s initiatives at home and abroad, cast him as the man who had persuaded President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and — more important — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of the need to show restraint in Georgia and sign on to the deal.
Unidentified diplomats quoted by Le Figaro suggested that Mr. Putin was furious with Georgia but had been persuaded by Mr. Sarkozy’s argument that Russia would not want to overdo its military triumph, and thus cast Georgia in the sympathetic role of aggrieved resistance.
Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas of Lithuania as being among those European Union ministers who argued that there must be consequences for Russia’s “unacceptable and unproportional” use of force.
Mr. Steinmeier, who tried and failed to defuse the conflict over Abkhazia last month, replied that there was “no point in us getting lost in a long debate today about responsibility for and origins of the escalation of the last few days.”
The presidents of the three Baltic states and Poland — all European Union members — joined the president of Ukraine late Tuesday in a mission to Tbilisi to underscore their support for President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.
NYT
Monitors? How about couple or four brigades of NATO Peace keepers, with tanks and planes.
The sudden eruption of war in Georgia last week bared divisions within Europe over a resurgent Russia and Georgia’s pursuit of NATO membership. Georgia has cast itself as engaged in a lonely struggle to maintain democracy in Russia’s backyard.
The ministers appeared to be edging closer to an agreement on sending peacekeepers to the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia to monitor the fragile truce, which Georgian officials claimed Russia had already violated. During their meeting — an emergency session precipitated by the Caucasus crisis — the European Union’s 27 foreign ministers made contradictory statements about whether to punish Russia for its military strikes on Georgian territory and skirted awkward issues like Georgia’s push for fast-track NATO membership or the future status of South Ossetia.
Several ministers said they backed the French proposal for a European presence on the ground.
“The idea of having monitors — what you call peacekeeping troops, I wouldn’t call them that — but European controllers, monitors, facilitators, yes, yes and yes,” Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France told reporters at the start of the meeting. “That is how Europe should be on the ground.” The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and his British counterpart, David Miliband, expressed their support for the idea.
Any peacekeeping presence will require Russian and Georgian assent to be effective. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which helped the European Union broker the deal to end the fighting, has been responsible for monitoring South Ossetia, while the United Nations has been the monitoring presence in Abkhazia. Both enclaves have been in dispute with Georgia since the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union ignited old ethnic and other feuds.
Mr. Kouchner, who accompanied President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on his mission to broker a peace agreement in Moscow on Tuesday, said he was convinced that Russia would accept a European presence. He did not rule out Russian troops taking part.
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt of Sweden, who visited Georgia on behalf of the Council of Europe — a grouping of 47 nations that promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law — cast doubt on whether Moscow would allow European monitors into zones that it had held or captured.
“There are no signs of the Russians letting in anyone else,” he said, according to Reuters. “I don’t really see it happening — at the moment the Russians are firmly in control.”
Mr. Miliband said the European Union should decide next month “whether or not, and how” to continue talks on closer ties with Moscow. He noted that the Group of 7 major industrialized powers had been coordinating their response to the Georgia crisis without involving Russia.
Mr. Sarkozy’s diplomatic success in Moscow and Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, was trumpeted by friendly French media on Wednesday.
The daily Le Figaro, which regularly praises Mr. Sarkozy’s initiatives at home and abroad, cast him as the man who had persuaded President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and — more important — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of the need to show restraint in Georgia and sign on to the deal.
Unidentified diplomats quoted by Le Figaro suggested that Mr. Putin was furious with Georgia but had been persuaded by Mr. Sarkozy’s argument that Russia would not want to overdo its military triumph, and thus cast Georgia in the sympathetic role of aggrieved resistance.
Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas of Lithuania as being among those European Union ministers who argued that there must be consequences for Russia’s “unacceptable and unproportional” use of force.
Mr. Steinmeier, who tried and failed to defuse the conflict over Abkhazia last month, replied that there was “no point in us getting lost in a long debate today about responsibility for and origins of the escalation of the last few days.”
The presidents of the three Baltic states and Poland — all European Union members — joined the president of Ukraine late Tuesday in a mission to Tbilisi to underscore their support for President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.
NYT
Monitors? How about couple or four brigades of NATO Peace keepers, with tanks and planes.
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