Europe Takes Lead in Bid to Resolve Conflict
"The Moscow Times", - 12.08.2008

Moscow's expanding military operation in Georgia and the threat of a large-scale international conflict led to a frenzy of diplomatic activity Monday, with Europe in the lead.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, made a lightening visit to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and had President Mikheil Saakashvili sign a cease-fire pledge that will also be presented to the Russian leadership.

Yet enormous doubts prevailed about the persuasive power that such a document might have in Moscow, where President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday indirectly compared Saakashvili with Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin drew a comparison with Saddam Hussein.

In an effort to maximize the initiative's weight, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was planning to follow Kouchner's path.

Sarkozy will arrive in Tbilisi on Tuesday and later travel to Moscow, Saakashvili said in televised comments.

However, the French Embassy would only confirm that Sarkozy planned "a large meeting with officials," including Medvedev, in Moscow on Tuesday. "It might be logistically difficult to travel to Tbilisi the same day," embassy spokesman Ivan Sergeff said.

Kouchner also traveled Monday to Gori, the nearest Georgian town to the conflict zone in South Ossetia, where a Russian bomber attack caused civilian deaths Saturday.

He later traveled to Vladikavkaz, the capital of Russia's North Ossetia, to speak to refugees there, Sergeff said.

Kouchner was accompanied by his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, whose country currently leads the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Both ministers planned to travel to Moscow late Monday.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will hold talks with them Tuesday morning and hold a press briefing later, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Yet, increasingly belligerent rhetoric in Moscow denouncing Western support for Georgia boded ill for peace talks.

Speaking during a televised address to the government presidium, Putin lambasted the United States for helping Georgia move its troops home from Iraq. This amounted to "a movement away from a settlement," he said.

"Of course, Saddam Hussein had to be hung for his destruction of several Shiite villages. But as for the current Georgian leadership -- who in one hour razed 10 Ossetian villages to the ground, who crushed children and the elderly with tanks, who burned alive peaceful citizens in barns -- these 'activists' should of course be protected," Putin complained.

It was unclear what part Putin would take in negotiations. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he knew of no planned meetings between Putin and the European visitors Tuesday.

Medvedev compared current support for Georgia with Western appeasement of Hitler in 1938.

State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov accused Saakashvili of policies reminiscent of Hitler and demanded that he be put in front of an international tribunal on genocide charges.

European Union officials tried to put on a brave face despite the saber rattling. Asked why the Kremlin should listen to the European mediators, Taneli Lahti, head of the EU delegation's political section in Moscow, said, "Everybody wishes that peace will be restored as soon as possible." Lahti said a peace initiative put forward by Germany last month with a focus on Abkhazia should not be discarded. "Obviously, it is still relevant," he said.

Carl Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister and a senior official in the Council of Europe, and Terry Davis, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, also traveled to Georgia on Monday.

In a more hopeful comment from Moscow, Medvedev told Finnish President Tarja Halonen in a telephone conversation that he favored a mission of OSCE representatives being stationed in South Ossetia, the Kremlin said. The OSCE has a mission in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and its staff was evacuated last week, a spokesman said in Vienna. Finnish Foreign Minister Stubb, who is the organization's chairman, will seek more detail on the role Europe's largest security body could play in South Ossetia when visiting Moscow, the spokesman, Martin Nesirky said, Reuters reported.

The cease-fire plan proposed by Kouchner and Stubb calls for a return to pre-conflict positions in South Ossetia, a joint peacekeeping force and OSCE monitoring. "We signed a plan saying that the status quo ante is to be restored," Saakashvili told reporters after talks with Kouchner.

A diplomatic source within the OSCE said the agreement had a good chance of being heard in Moscow because the 57-member body is the only security organization that combines Russia and Western members.

"But the fact that Russian officials like [Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov have denounced Saakashvili as no respectable person makes things complicated, of course," the source said, speaking upon condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Besides Europe and the OSCE, the Group of Seven added pressure on Moscow, demanding that it accepts an immediate cease-fire and agree to international mediation.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues from the G7 spoke by telephone and pledged their support for a negotiated solution to the conflict.

By Nikolaus von Twickel