“Satellite images show South Ossetia destruction”- Reuters

 

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Satellite images taken just after a battle between Georgia and Russia over the region of South Ossetia show fresh damage to villages continued for days after the initial clash, researchers and human rights activists reported on Thursday.The images analyzed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science and Human Rights Program do not show who was responsible for the damage — Georgia, Russia or other groups. But they may be evidence of war crimes, said Amnesty International, which commissioned the study. "These images do not lie — the additional destruction shown from August 10 to August 19 must be used to establish who had responsibility for protecting civilians from attacks by militia," said Amnesty’s Ariela Blatter."The destruction of civilian infrastructure highlights the need for the international community to undertake an independent investigation of abuses during the conflict, with the complete support of all parties involved."The crisis erupted in August when Georgia tried to forcibly retake the pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, which threw off Georgian rule in the 1990s. Russia counter-attacked into Georgia on August 7 and 8, overwhelming Georgian forces and drawing condemnation from the West. Russian forces pulled back into South Ossetia on Wednesday as part of a cease-fire brokered by the European Union.Georgia says Russia fully controlled Tskhinvali by August 10, but Russia has said Georgian troops inflicted most of the damage to civilian areas of South Ossetia.Lars Bromley, who heads the AAAS project to use satellites to monitor human rights abuses and conflict, said it was difficult to get images to verify the claims. "We were able to use only a few commercial satellites. Anyone with a credit card can order imagery from them and the competition was heavy," Bromley said in a telephone interview."What it does is it probably sheds some light on how much damage was done to Tskhinvali and other surrounding villages … while the Russians were in control and while the Georgians were in control," Bromley added. His group has documented conflicts in places such as Myanmar, Sudan and Ethiopia. The images, taken on August 10 and 19, show 424 civilian structures near Tskhinvali intact on August 10 but damaged by the 19th. In Tamarasheni 152 structures that were intact on August 10 seemed to have been damaged by the 19th. Amnesty said the images support on-the-ground reports that more than 100 civilian houses in Tskhinvali were shelled during the initial Georgian bombardment. "Amnesty International is particularly concerned by the reported formation in and around South Ossetia of irregular, locally organized armed groups able to act with impunity, increasing the potential dangers for civilians," the group said in a statement. It reported looting, burning and beatings. "To be sure, there was indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force on both sides of the conflict," Anna Neistat of Human Rights Watch told a briefing earlier this week in Washington.”

click for full article  http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnTRE4984JU.html

“Russian president Dmitry Medvedev calls for Europe to freeze out US” – Telegraph

President Medvedev blamed Washington’s ‘economic egotism’ for the world’s financial woes Photo: AP

Confident that a spat with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Mr Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. Gone was the kind of war time rhetoric that saw Mr Medvedev lash out at the West and characterise his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili as a "lunatic". Instead Mr Medvedev spoke of a Russia that was "absolutely not interested in confrontation". Yet there was little doubt that Mr Medvedev was playing the divide-and-rule tactics of his predecessor Vladimir Putin by seeking to pit the United States against its European allies. In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the United States was at the root of all the world’s problems. He blamed Washington’s "economic egotism" for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy. He also maintained that the United States was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

"After toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the United States started a series of unilateral actions," Mr Medvedev said. "As a result, a trend appeared in international relations towards creating dividing lines. This was in fact the revival of a policy popular in the past and known as containment." While he called for a cooling of the noxious rhetoric that has blighted East-West relations in the past two years, Mr Medvedev clearly laid the blame for the deterioration on the United States, which he said was again viewing Russian through the prism of the Cold War. "Sovietology, like paranoia, is a very dangerous disease, and it is a pity that part of the US administration still suffers from it," he said. To remedy Washington’s ambitions to play the global policeman, Mr Medvedev proposed an overhaul of the world’s security and financial structures.

In order to end the "unipolar" model in which the world depended on the United States, he proposed creating new financial systems to challenge the dominance of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, both of which had fallen under Washington’s spell. Slamming the enlargement of Nato, which he said had advance provocatively towards the borders of Russia, he also proposed drafting a new European Security Treaty. While Russia has insisted it is not intending to supplant Nato, Mr Medvedev made it clear that the US-dominated alliance was partly responsible for the war in the Caucasus by its failure to rein in Georgian "aggression". If the tone was softer, the theme of the speech was familiar, and drew comparisons with an address by Mr Putin in February last year in which the former president, now prime minister, railed against US "hyperpower". Many observers say that address heralded the beginning of a new era in East-West confrontation. "Medvedev’s speech was more balanced than previous ones, but it was still permeated with criticism of the United States," said Nikolai Petrov, a Russian foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Centre think-tank in Moscow. "He curtsies to Europe but what he proposes is ultimately anachronistic rather than constructive."

click for full article – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3159998/Russian-president-Dmitry-Medvedev-calls-for-Europe-to-freeze-out-US.html

del.icio.us Tags: ossetia, abkhazia, georgia, russia, crisis