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Monday,
August 13,
2007, #153 (1420)
The UN Security Council postponed action on Georgia's emergency session request regarding the August 6 missile incident, stating it needs more evidence. Russian peacekeepers have complicated the situation by retracting their original testimony that Georgian airspace was intruded from the northeast, which helped form the basis of the OSCE's initial assessment. "In the absence of any information, the council members considered we should await the results of any inquiry, in particular the one by the OSCE...before taking any decision," explained UN Security Council President, Pascal Gayama of the Republic of the Congo, Reuters wrote on August 9. Irakli Chikovani, deputy Permanent Representative of the Mission of Georgia to the United Nations, called on the international community to display "common sense," requesting an emergency meeting to discuss the "act of aggression" against Georgia. The statement came after the very first August 7 preliminary report from Georgia on the Tsitelubani missile incident in Gori district. The report concluded that the type of intruder aircraft and the unexploded missile were of "Russian origin." The following OSCE spot report, released two days later, failed to corroborate the technical details, but did suggest that the invader jet came from the northeast, the direction of the Russian border. In addition to Georgian radar records, the OSCE account cited eyewitnesses from the nearby Joint Peacekeeping Forces (JPKF) Observation Posts-whose personnel included North Ossetian peacekeepers-as well as nearby villagers who testified to the route of the intruders. With Moscow officials firmly rejecting any involvement in the bombing, OSCE's joint monitoring team including both Russian and Ossetian experts unanimously signed off on the report. The two reports helped make Russia's assertion that Tbilisi was behind the attack seem unlikely. However, just a day after acknowledging the JPKF and OSCE observers' report, Russian peacekeepers announced another independent investigation on August 8, turning the conclusions of the previous OSCE report upside down. In contrast to the OSCE conclusion that the aircraft entered from the northeast, close to Stepantsminda [formerly Kazbegi], the new investigation carried out by Russian peacekeepers posited that the aircraft entered from the east. "We consider it a hard violation that the [easterly-originating] route was not agreed with us, moreover neither Georgian nor Ossetian observers were present. Thus we will not sign this report," Mamuka Kurashvili, commander of Georgian peacekeeper forces in Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone told Rustavi 2. Georgia refuses
to sign the "fabricated evidence," according to a Ministry
for Conflict Resolution Issues statement on August 10. The Ministry
asserts that Russian peacekeepers from the JPKF decided to implement
additional "illegal" monitoring on their own, questioning
a few old women in the secessionist-controlled South Ossetian village
of Armazi, which falls beyond the scope of their mandate. The next day, Russian vice Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov answered with strong words to a similar effect, talking of "another theatrical staging performed but not very professionally produced" by Georgia. Russia's Permanent Representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, gave Russia's position to the UN Council. "This thing has to be thoroughly investigated first," until it appears before the UN debates, Reuters quoted the diplomat as saying. Churkin represents one of five veto holders in the council. "I wouldn't say the Security Council turned its back on Georgia to refrain from irritating Russia but since Russia itself is a veto-holding state in the UN, probably after shadow consultations in between, they just decided to postpone the debates in order to avoid a scandalous vote down of the issue," Shalva Pichkhadze, chairman of the NGO Georgia for NATO, commented to the Messenger.
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No
UN emergency session on missile incident, as Russian peacekeepers release
counterevidence