Russia rejects UN Georgia draft
karthika
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 13:08 administrator
Russia has rejected a draft UN Security Council resolution on Georgia,
saying it contradicted the terms of last week's ceasefire deal.
The draft text called on Russia to pull back its forces to the
positions held before the current conflict.
But Russia says the truce allows its troops to stay in a buffer zone
on the Georgia side of South Ossetia's border.
Moscow earlier dismissed a Nato warning that normal relations were
impossible while its troops remained in Georgia.
The conflict broke out on 7 August when Georgia launched an assault to
wrest back control of the Moscow-backed breakaway region of South
Ossetia, triggering a counter-offensive by Russian troops who advanced
beyond South Ossetia into Georgia's heartland.
Russia's UN ambassador said the French-drafted UN resolution went
against the terms of the ceasefire brokered by France's President
Nicolas Sarkozy.
Vitaly Churkin said the resolution should incorporate all elements of
the six-point peace plan agreed last week.
He also objected to language in the draft reaffirming Georgia's
territorial integrity, saying South Ossetia and Abkhazia did not want
to be part of Georgia.
Russia can veto UN resolutions and the ambassador told the BBC that
putting the text to a vote would be pointless.
He said: "It's a waste of time because the process of the withdrawal
of Russian forces will continue."
Following a rebuke from Nato's 26 foreign ministers in Brussels,
Moscow accused Nato of bias in favour of the "criminal regime" in the
Georgian capital Tbilisi.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Russia risked becoming the
"outlaw" of the conflict, in an interview with CBS news on the
sidelines of the Nato emergency summit.
Russia says President Dmitri Medvedev told President Sarkozy that by
Friday, Russian troops would either be sent home, be pulled back to
South Ossetia or to a buffer zone along the border.
Russia said it had begun a pullback on Tuesday as it withdrew 11
military vehicles from the Georgian town of Gori.
A Russian officer told reporters invited to watch that the column was
heading for South Ossetia and then home to Russia, but Georgia
dismissed it all as a show.
BBC correspondents there say there are still several artillery
positions and checkpoints in Gori.
And the operators of the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti told the BBC
that Russian forces had seized the commercial harbour.
In an apparent goodwill gesture on Tuesday the two sides exchanged
prisoners at a checkpoint near Tbilisi, but on the same day Russia
paraded captive Georgians on armoured vehicles.
(BBC News)
Lokku Banda
> Russia rejects UN Georgia draft
>
> Wednesday, 20 August 2008 13:08 administrator
> Russia has rejected a draft UN Security Council resolution on Georgia,
> saying it contradicted the terms of last week's ceasefire deal.
>