You know you really are pissing me off. Its bad enough that Bush backed a Georgian neo hotshot who seems to be even more incompetent than the typical neo but now you want to me to be proud of that mess that's been created even as you try to pretend that the world doesn't know how this mess got started in the first place. Scheisse!
Georgia conflict: Condoleezza Rice toughens stance towards Russia
Washington has toughened its stance towards Russia as it sought to limit the damage to its prestige over the crisis in Georgia
By Alex Spillius in Washington and Adrian Blomfield in Gori
Last Updated: 1:05AM BST 18 Aug 2008
On the defensive after criticism that its response to the crisis has failed to stop Russia from prolonging its military operations in Georgia, the Bush administration lashed out at Moscow. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said that Russia's reputation was now "in tatters".
But this did not stop Russia from searching for a fresh pretext to extend its occupation of Georgian territory. While President Dmitry Medvedev announced that a troop withdrawal would finally begin on Monday, a spokesman for the Russian defence ministry later accused Georgia of preparing "a major provocative act" in the strategic town of Gori.
Miss Rice, who is to leave Washington for Brussels on Monday for an emergency Nato summit, called on Mr Medvedev to ensure that he carries out his latest promise.
"I hope this time he will keep his word," she said.
"Russia's reputation as a potential partner in international institutions, diplomatic, political, security, economic, is frankly, in tatters.
She added: "Russia will pay a price. We will look seriously with our allies and bilaterally at the consequences of this Russian action ... Georgia will rebuild, Russia's reputation may not be rebuilt."
Her comments followed criticism that under Miss Rice's stewardship American foreign policy has suffered a major embarrassment, having failed to spot the Russian invasion or to force its end.
The incident has been described by one think tank as the "foreign policy equivalent of Hurricane Katrina", after the woefully mismanaged response to the 2005 national disaster in Louisiana.
Though Ms Rice said Russia would "pay a price" for its actions, she has discussed the idea of throwing Russia out of the G8 group of industrialised nations, or of fast-tracking Nato membership of Georgia and Ukraine, another former Soviet Union territory under threat from its former master.
Likewise George W Bush also stiffened his language towards Moscow on Saturday, but failed to suggest a specific measure. On Sunday he failed to mention the crisis at all, simply praising the achievements of the American Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps.
Renewed Russian hostility has been a particular embarrassment for the US president who early in his administration publicly placed his trust in Vladimir Putin.
In a sign of the frustration felt at home, two US Congressmen have tabled a draft resolution urging the International Olympic Committee to punish Russia by moving the 2014 Winter Olympics out of Sochi, a Black Sea resort in Russia.
Allyson Schwartz and Bill Shuster, members of the House of Representatives Georgia caucus, said they plan to file a resolution declaring that Russia's movement of troops into Georgia on the eve of the Beijing Olympics makes it an unacceptable country to host the games.
John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations renowned as a foreign policy "hawk", said that having mismanaged the crisis so far, the Bush administration should not let Russia go unpunished if it stuck to its promise of withdrawing troops.
He said that Miss Rice remained in control of foreign policy, which she has steered back towards a traditional diplomatic approach her critics decry as weak.
"She has been the dominant voice in the entire Bush second term on any issue of importance and I don't know why that differ now, unless the president seizes the reins. But I don't see any evidence of that happening," he said.
As the Russian occupation continued on Sunday, the defence ministry in Moscow claimed to have uncovered a Georgian plot to send undercover mercenaries, Ukrainians and Chechens among them, into the strategic town of Gori.
"They will be dressed in Russian military uniform and let go in Gori, where these bands will loot and pillage the local residents," a spokesman for the ministry said.
"This will be filmed by television cameras and then presented to the world as an atrocity of the Russian war machine."
Georgian officials had earlier made similar claims about the Russians. They alleged that Russian soldiers had stolen Georgian uniforms as part of an unspecified plot to make Georgia look as though it had broken the ceasefire.
The mutual allegations of subterfuge and conspiracy have again underscored how fragile the French-brokered truce between the two countries is.
The Georgian government of President Mikheil Saakashvili meanwhile received a modest boost for the country's Nato ambitions when Angela Merkel, the visiting German chancellor, indicated that Georgia's membership hopes were not dead.
"In December, we will have a first evaluation of the situation and we are on a clear path in the direction of Nato membership," she said.
Georgia's desire to join Nato has infuriated Moscow and played a major role in causing the war. Despite Mrs Merkel's encouragement, most analysts say that the conflict over South Ossetia has all but ended the likelihood of Georgia joining the alliance, with many western European countries, particularly Italy, likely to oppose the bid in an attempt to mollify the Kremlin.
Russia has so far shown little sign of bowing to western pressure to withdraw from Georgia, despite threats from the United States of international isolation.
If anything, Russia's stranglehold of Georgia has tightened. Russian troops entered the towns of Khashuri and Akhalgori for the first time on Sunday, while their troops elsewhere in the country showed signs of digging themselves in.
Russian soldiers, now within just 25 miles of Tbilisi, set up six checkpoints on the road to Gori, which lies 15 miles south of the Ossetian border, while tanks entrenched themselves deep into the countryside.
Fields on either side of the road were set ablaze to deny cover to Georgian military hardware.
A railway bridge on the main line connecting Georgia to its neighbours was also blown up over the weekend, essentially severing the last route for freight and trade in the country after Russian soldiers also took control of the country's main east-west highway.
A former White House official said: "The United States is not going to go to war with Russia over the borders of South Ossetia and so the tools available to us are largely diplomatic. For all those critics who claim the Administration has not relied sufficiently on diplomacy, this is what it looks like when there are few good military options and one has to rely primarily on diplomacy.”
telegraph.co.uk |
