Bump: EU report into the war released.
And this is the country that Bush was pushing to have NATO membership.
Quote:
The war in Georgia last year was started by a Georgian attack that was not justified by international law, an independent report has concluded.However, the attack followed months of Russian provocation, the EU-sponsored report said.
Russia said the report delivered an "unequivocal answer" on the question of who started the conflict.
But Georgia said the investigation proved that Russia had been preparing for war all along.
The death toll from the August 2008 war is generally put in the hundreds. Tens of thousands fled their homes.
The report was commissioned by the Council of the European Union, and written by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, with the help of 30 European military, legal and history experts.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8281990.stm
And with the benefit of hindsight a look back at both Presidential candidates comments on the crisis at the time.
Mc Cain:
"I share their (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) regret that NATO's decision to withhold from Georgia a Membership Action Plan may have been viewed as a green light for aggression in the region."
Obama:
"I strongly condemn the outbreak of violence in Georgia, and urge an immediate end to armed conflict. Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war. Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected. All sides should enter into direct talks on behalf of stability in Georgia, and the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis.”
And of course Bush:
“In a statement at the White House, President George W Bush accused Russia of “bullying and intimidation”, saying it was an unacceptable “way to conduct foreign policy in the 21st Century”.”
Anyways. all in all a great job by Saakashvili. He invites the Russians in and gives them good reason to grab a foothold, and make an argument for being in 2 territories, blows any chance his country ever had of getting NATO membership, gets a significant chunk of his military hardware taken out, not to mention the infrastructure damage and is condemned in an independant review for creating the whole mess.
WSJ's take on the report.
Quote:
A 9-month international investigation into the 2008 war in the Caucasus concludes that Georgia triggered the war, but that Russia had prepared the ground, broke international law by invading Georgia as a whole and that Russia-backed South Ossetian militias conducted ethnic cleansing of Georgian civilians, according to a copy of the conclusions reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
The conflict, which briefly brought the U.S. and Russia into Cold War-style confrontation, left some 850 people dead, forced more than 100,000 people from their homes and has left Russian troops in occupation of two territories in Georgia, the report said.
Compiled for the European Union by Swiss diplomat Heidi Taglivini, the report found that while there was evidence that regular Russian troops as well as volunteers and mercenaries had entered South Ossetia in Georgia before the start of the conflict on Aug. 7, no evidence was found of the full-scale Russian invasion to which Georgia said it was responding.
Answering the question of whether Georgia's decision to shell the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, on Aug. 7 was justifiable under international law, the report concludes: "It was not."
The conclusions found that Moscow was justified in its initial intervention, because some of its peacekeepers in the territory were, or were in danger of being killed. But the report leaves neither side looking good.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1254...sections_world