December 2, 2008 3:40:08 AM CST
(Newser) – Georgia-Russia peace talks broke down today when Russian officials skipped a plenary session, Reuters reports, and the two sides failed even to agree on whether to include officials from South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the closed-door meeting. Each side bitterly blamed the other amid continuing tensions emanating from the five-day war in August.
"The Russians and the Georgians were not in a formal meeting at the same time, they weren't in the same room at the same time,"said one US diplomat.
Sources Reuters, Voice of America
Nov 24, 08 4:19 AM CST Shots were fired close to a motorcade ferrying Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili and Polish President Lech Kaczynski to a refugee camp in Georgia near the border with the breakaway region of South Ossetia, officials said. Saakashvili blamed Russian troops at a border checkpoint for the gunfire, reports Voice of America. No one was hurt. Russia denied any involvement. More »
Nov 20, 08 7:14 AM CST Nicholas Kristof travels to Tbilisi, where ambitious, America-loving Georgians live in fear of a resurgent Russia. The United States needs to support this capitalist enclave in the Caucasus, writes the New York Times columnist—but not by letting it join NATO. The reason? President Mikheil Saakashvili may be brilliant and charismatic, but he has also been "spectacularly reckless," and tying American and Georgian troops together under a NATO flag would make things much worse. More »
Nov 7, 08 7:24 AM CST Independent military observers have published new accounts that contradict Georgia's claim that it was acting defensively against Russian aggression. The reports suggest instead that the small Georgian army moved into Tskhinvali unprovoked, unleashing artillery and rocket fire without discrimination at civilians and unarmed monitors. It also discounts the claim, made on television the night of the invasion, that ethnic Georgian villages in breakaway South Ossetia were under attack. More »
Oct 8, 08 2:00 PM CDT Russian troops have withdrawn from the “buffer zones” that separate the secessionist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from the rest of Georgia ahead of Friday's deadline, the BBC reports. Though Russia plans to keep 7,600 troops inside the breakaway republics themselves, the move "paves the way for the resumption of negotiations on an ambitious" EU-Russia partnership, said Nicolas Sarkozy. More »
Oct 6, 08 12:30 PM CDT The fact that Russian troops continue to upgrade a dirt road that connects a town near Georgia’s capital with the capital of the breakaway area of South Ossetia has many Georgians in the area believing Moscow isn’t serious about Friday’s deadline to withdraw troops, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The road would allow easy reinforcement of Akhalgori—just 25 miles from Tblisi. More »
Russia has just walked out of the Geneva talks ... which basically means that Russia has no interest whatsoever at this stage in any diplomatic process. - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili
The Georgian version just doesn't hold water. We deplore the absence of the Georgian delegation but we did not see it as tragic. - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin
Russia • Georgia • South Ossetia • peace talks • Geneva • conflict resolution
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