One of most discussed aspects of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Dushanbe over the weekend was the third point of the summit declaration devoted to the situation in South Ossetia. Although member nations expressed “deep concern” over the tensions surrounding this issue, they also pledged to “support Russia’s active role in facilitating peace and cooperation in the region.”
Immediately following the signing of that declaration, the Western media began an intense and deliberate disinformation campaign to try to depict the position of SCO countries as not supporting Russia’s policy toward Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Europe must play a “strong and level-headed role” to settle the conflict in the Caucasus, according to a German newspaper published Sunday.
United stand: (From left) Presidents Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan), Hu Jintao (China), Kurmanbek Bakiyev (Kyrgyzstan), Emomali Rakhmon (Tajikistan), Dmitry Medvedev (Russia) and Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan) in Dushanbe on Thursday.
MOSCOW: Russia has won crucial support for its peace efforts in South Ossetia from China and other allies in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
PUERTO ORDAZ, Venezuela (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez backed Russia’s recognition of two breakaway regions of Georgia on Friday, making Venezuela only the second nation to support Moscow’s stance.
BERLIN, August 30 (RIA Novosti) – The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has accumulated evidence pointing to “numerous wrong decisions” made by Georgian leaders that led to a military crisis with Russia, Der Spiegel said on Saturday.
Russia will not be isolated because it protected its citizens and upheld its peacekeeping mission, the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said. In an interview on German TV, Putin suggested that if Russia had not responded to Georgian aggression, there could have been a tragedy along the scale of what happened in the former Yugoslavia.
“The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO’s grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.”
The reason being , as we have been at pains to point out, that the whole Georgia operation, from the US point of view, was concerned, not with the realities of geopolitics but with saving the knecks of Cheney and co. It may seem remarkable that thousands of lives were sacrificed, a key US ally was humiliated and all foreign policy rationality abandoned just to save a few war criminals from the dock, but such is the reality of politics at the end of empire.
If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia’s de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated.
UNITED NATIONS, August 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has accused the UN Security Council of having double standards over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and of lacking understanding of the conflicts in the separatist Georgian regions.
The West should be seeking to improve cooperation with Russia rather than getting agitated about Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, according to veteran Social Democratic politician Egon Bahr.
In an interview with CNN Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict may have been staged to secure a victory for one of the presidential candidates in the U.S. He says preliminary reports show that U.S. citizens may have been present in the combat zone.
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