TBILISI/SOCHI: The United States demanded yesterday that Russian troops end their occupation of Georgia immediately after Georgia signed a cease-fire agreement.
Speaking alongside Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice evoked the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago to crush liberal reforms: “Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once. This is no longer 1968.”
Saakashvili said following five hours of talks with Rice that he had inked the cease-fire pact, negotiated by France on behalf of the European Union. As they were speaking, a Reuters correspondent witnessed a column of up to 17 Russian armored personnel carriers advancing along the main highway to within 55 km of the Georgian capital.
The UN’s highest court said it would hold public hearings next month on a Georgian application to the court over Russian actions in its territory. The hearings will be held at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague from Sept. 8 to 10.
The simmering crisis over the rebel Georgian region of South Ossetia exploded last Thursday when Georgia sent a force to try to retake the Russian-backed province, provoking a massive counterattack by Moscow.
The Kremlin deployed warships, planes, tanks and troops against Georgia in its biggest military operation outside its borders since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Russia’s international isolation grew yesterday. Its biggest trading partner Germany condemned it for going too far in Georgia and neighboring Poland sealed a pact with Washington to host part of an anti-missile system.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev showed defiance after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
He said Moscow would respond the same way if its peacekeepers were attacked again and questioned whether the rebel regions at the center of the conflict could ever live again under Georgian rule.
Medvedev denounced the Polish-US deal as a threat to Russia. “The deployment of new anti-missile forces has as its aim the Russian Federation,” he told a news conference alongside Merkel. “Therefore any fairy tales about deterring other states, fairy tales that with the help of this system, we will deter some sort of rogue states, no longer work.”
