International Community Says: Stop Fighting!

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met with Georgian Foreign Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili in Tbilisi on August 11, bringing with them a draft ceasefire agreement.

“We will visit Moscow and meet Putin and Lavrov. Then we will hold consultations in Brussels. Our key goal now is to achieve a ceasefire,'' – Kouchner announced.

The envoys and the Georgian Foreign Minister visited Gori, a city which has been the subject of air attacks for the past few days. “We are shocked by what we see and I will address this issue with Kouchner,” Stubb said in a televised interview.

President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili expressed readiness to sign the ceasefire document if Russia stops attacking Georgian territory: “We are ready to stop the war which was not started by us,” he said in a televised interview. Meanwhile the international community continues to actively observe the situation in Georgia. Various international organizations are visiting Georgia, trying to regulate the conflict.

Matthew Bryza, the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, arrived in Tbilisi on a special visit. “A ceasefire is inevitable and Russia should understand this,” he said in an interview with the Georgian public broadcaster. The Georgian Ambassador to France, Mamuka Kudava, said that Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, plans to visit Georgia on August 12th.