STANDOFF SIMMERS IN SOUTH KYRGYZSTAN
9 November
At least 20 people were arrested near the southern Osh region of Kyrgyzstan for occupying land illegally, deputy officials in the region said. Around 500 Kyrgyz protesters from the region arrived in the ethnically diverse south during the weekend with plans to divide the area into plots. More protesters arrived Tuesday, saying they wouldn't vacate the area unless the land was distributed among ethnic Kyrgyz. Ethnic violence gripped the southern Kyrgyz cities of Jala-Abad and Osh following an April coup that forced deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to flee the country. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands were displaced in conflicts between the Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities. Kushbek Tezekbaev, a deputy regional governor in Osh, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the action of the Kyrgyz group is illegal. "We are demanding that people obey the law," he added. Kyrgyzstan held elections in October. A party loyal to the deposed president was among the five leading groups tasked with forming a new government. Interim President Roza Otunbayeva said last week she thought a new parliament would have its first meeting Nov. 12, though authorities in Bishkek said the legal challenge was in part to blame for a decision to hold off until later this week. (UPI)

US, KAZAKHSTAN SIGN DEAL TO EASE FLIGHTS TO AFGHANISTAN
12 November
The United States and Kazakhstan signed an agreement Friday opening new air transit routes for US troops and supplies flying to Afghanistan, the State Department said. "The agreement enhances a United States-Kazakhstan arrangement, under which the United States began transit flights to Afghanistan across Kazakhstan’s airspace in 2001," it said in a statement. "By providing access to new transit routes, Kazakhstan is providing valuable support to the international effort to defeat the violent extremism in Afghanistan and to ensure Afghanistan’s and the region’s security," it said. The deal signed in Washington by Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs and Erlan Idrissov, Kazakhstan’s ambassador to Washington, permits US polar routes to Kazakhstan, Shapiro's office said. The move saves time and fuel for the aircraft involved, it added in an e-mail exchange.The deal permits both US military flights and commercial contract flights, it added. (AFP)

KAZAKH GOVERNMENT WANTS SCIENTISTS ABROAD TO RETURN HOME
12 November
The Kazakh government plans to start repatriating Kazakh scientists and researchers who are working abroad, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports. Kazakh Education and Science Minister Bakhytzhan Zhumagulov said in the Senate on November 12 that there are currently 125 talented Kazakh scientists and researchers on the list of those whom the government wants to return to Kazakhstan. "We have drafted a document addressed to the government that proposes ways to bring home Kazakh scientists who left the country at various times and for various reasons," he said. Zhumagulov said that Russia and China both have similar programs to bring back their expatriates. Hundreds of thousands of Kazakh citizens left Kazakhstan in the 1990s as a result of the deep economic crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. (RFE/RL)

AFGHANISTAN TALIBS BURNED AN ESCORT OF 12 NATO GASOLINE TANK TRUCKS
15 November
Afghanistan Talibs burned an escort of 12 NATO gasoline tank trucks, the agency reports citing RIA RosBusinessConsulting (RBC). According to RBC, 12 large gasoline tank trucks have been burned. The escort was attacked by a group of armed insurgents in the suburb of Dzhalal Abad in the Nangarhar Province in the east of the country. Two civilians are among victims. (Kazakhstan Today)

TURKMEN LEADER TOUTS CHINA, IRAN TIES BUT SILENT ON NABUCCO
17 November
The leader of Turkmenistan on Wednesday touted growing energy ties with Iran and China but stayed silent on Europe's proposed Nabucco pipeline aimed at breaking Russia's grip on gas exports. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, in a written address at the opening of an annual conference in the capital Ashgabat, singled out ties with Tehran and Beijing while also praising a Turkmen-led pipeline project to India through neighbouring Afghanistan. Mention of cooperation with Europe, however, was notably absent from Berdymukhamedov's annual address to the Oil and Gas Turkmenistan conference -- closely watched as a bellweather for the opaque country's thinking. "Exporting natural gas to the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, our country keeps pipeline modernisation activities at the centre of its attention," the statement said. "Furthermore, alongside conducting negotiations on the construction of a gas pipeline in second direction to China, Turkmenistan spares no effort to launch construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline." Turkmenistan, an isolated but resource-rich Central Asian state located on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, is thought to hold the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas. Ashgabat has been working to diversify away from its reliance on Soviet-era pipelines through Russia since a pipeline explosion in 2009 ground exports of Turkmen gas to a halt and soured ties with the Kremlin. At the height of the row with Russia last year, Berdymukhamedov pleased the crowd of mostly Western energy executives by throwing his weight behind the Nabucco pipeline project, a trans-Caspian pipeline to Europe aimed at breaking Moscow's stranglehold on Central Asian energy exports. But since then Ashgabat has opened a 7,000-kilometre natural gas pipeline to energy-hungry China and boosted exports to neighbouring Iran while progress on Nabucco has remained mired in diplomatic wrangling. (AFP)

CLINTON TO LEAD US DELEGATION TO KAZAKHSTAN SUMMIT
18 November
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the December 1-2 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Kazakhstan, a US diplomat said Wednesday. "Secretary Clinton plans to lead the US delegation to the OSCE summit," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said in prepared testimony to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. Blake noted that the gathering, to be held in Kazakhstan's capital Astana, would be the first ever in Central Asia."We hope that this event will shine a light on positive developments in Central Asia, and the role that the OSCE has played, and can play in the future, in promoting its principles throughout the OSCE region," he added. Kazakhstan took over the leadership of the OSCE on January 1, the first former Soviet republic to chair the transatlantic security body, despite its poor record in human rights and democracy. But Blake said the country had done "a very credible job," notably in troubled neighbor Kyrgyzstan where the organization "has been at the forefront of efforts to promote peace, democracy and reconciliation." Kazakhstan's long-serving strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev's current term in office expires in 2012, but in 2007 the parliament ruled that he should be able to stand for president as many times as he liked, as the country's first head of state. Kazakhstan ranked 142 out of 175 countries on media watchdog Reporters Without Borders' annual worldwide press freedom index last year. The last OSCE summit was held in Istanbul in 1999 and concluded with the adoption of a common declaration and a charter for European security. Meanwhile, Clinton said she would travel to the Gulf Arab state of Bahrain in early December. She announced the trip at the start of a meeting Wednesday with Bahrain's Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Mubarak al-Khalifa, but gave no details. (AFP)

AZERBAIJAN FREES 'DONKEY' SATIRE BLOGGER ADNAN HAJIZADE
18 November
A court in Azerbaijan has freed an opposition blogger who posted a satirical video online of a pantomime donkey giving a press conference. Adnan Hajizade and another man, Emin Milli, were jailed for two years on hooliganism charges in November 2009.  The two men and their supporters claim the charges were fabricated to stifle their anti-government campaigns. A court ruled on Thursday that Mr Hajizade could serve the remainder of his sentence as a suspended term. Mr Hajizade and Mr Milli were arrested after a scuffle in a restaurant in Baku, the Azeri capital, in July 2009, soon after the video was posted. The film quickly became a symbol of perceived intolerance of freedom of expression in Azerbaijan. The campaign for their release was taken up by President Barack Obama in September this year when he urged the Azeri authorities to free the men.  After he was freed on Thursday, Mr Hajizade appealed for the release of fellow blogger Emin Milli. A court is expected to hear an appeal against his sentence in the coming days. Human rights groups say oil-rich Azerbaijan has grown increasingly authoritarian in recent years. (BBC)

TURKMENISTAN PLEDGES GAS FOR NABUCCO
19 November
Turkmenistan's First Deputy Prime Minister Baymurad Khojamukhamedov has said his country is ready to provide some 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas to the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline project. Speaking at the "Oil and Gas Turkmenistan-2010" forum, Khojamukhamedov told some 700 delegates from 36 countries there would be an agreement on constructing a trans-Caspian pipeline along the bottom of the sea to transport Turkmen gas across the Caspian where it would be fed into pipelines linking up with the Nabucco pipeline. Khojamukhamedov noted a key pipeline from gas fields in eastern Turkmenistan to the Caspian shore was already under construction. Turkmenistan has often spoken about Nabucco as part of the country's diversification scheme but Ashgabat has not yet signed any contracts committing itself to the project. (RFE/RL)

RUSSIA ADMITS NO PROGRESS IN VOLATILE CAUCASUS
19 November
President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that Russia had failed to curb violence in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus, highlighting the Kremlin's struggle to contain a spreading Islamist insurgency.  A decade after Moscow drove separatists out of power in the second of two wars in Chechnya, the North Caucasus is plagued by near daily violence, where poverty-stricken youths fueled by jihad (holy war) want to carve out a separate, Islamic state."We must frankly admit that it (situation) has practically not improved," Medvedev told the Kremlin's envoy to the North Caucasus, Alexander Khloponin, as well as a slew of officers from the police and the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. Medvedev named the region -- a patchwork of mostly Muslim republics along the country's southern fringe -- Russia's biggest domestic problem last year. "The killing of civilians, spiritual leaders and law enforcement officers, shootouts and bombs are not going down in number," he said in Yessentuki, which sits at the foot of the Caucasus mountains in the Christian-majority Stavropol region. Across the North Caucasus, 259 state agents and 112 civilians were killed in January-November of this year mostly from militant activity, according to terrorism experts at the U.S.-based Monterey Institute for International Studies in California. The institute says up to 351 Islamist fighters were killed in the same period. Russia's National Anti-Terror Committee, part of the FSB, said last month that attacks in Chechnya and Ingushetia were down by nearly a half. Medvedev blamed the police for twisting statistics on the number of attacks in the region, calling them "utter rubbish". Multi-ethnic Dagestan on the Caspian Sea, which has a population of 2.5 million, has overtaken neighbouring Chechnya as the epicentre of violence in the insurgency. Twin suicide bomb attacks on the Moscow metro in March, which killed 40 people, were blamed on two women from Dagestan and were considered to be the first suicide bombs carried out by non-Chechens in the Russian heartland. After a string of scandals involving corruption and violence within the police this year, Medvedev pledged to reform the force and cut the 1.4 million staff at the Interior Ministry, which provides for the police, by 20 percent nationwide. However critics say there has been little substantial change so far, and Medvedev admitted in July that his administration had made almost no progress in fighting corruption.  (Reuters)

TWO HANDMADE BOMBS UNARMED IN DAGESTAN
19 November
Two 1-kilogram-TNT bombs were unarmed in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, on Friday, the information center of the National Counter Terrorism Committee told Itar-Tass.  A tenant informed the police about a suspicious plastic bag with sticking out wires at 12, Alferov Street, at 1:50 p.m. Moscow time. The area was blocked, and tenants were evacuated. “Employees of the Dagestani department of the Federal Security Service confirmed that the plastic bag contained two bombs made from champagne bottles filled with explosives. The bombs were unarmed with the use of a water gun at 5:15 p.m. Moscow time,” he said. “The bombs were preliminary estimated at one kilogram of TNT each,” the source said. No one was hurt, the source noted. Forensic experts keep working on the location, and a criminal case will be opened soon. The Committee thanked local residents for their vigilance and cooperation with the police. “The prevention of militant attacks in Dagestan has become a common cause of everyone interested in sociopolitical stability in the republic,” the source said. A source at the Dagestani Interior Ministry told Itar-Tass that the bombs were found near a polytechnic college. (Itar-Tass)

BAKU SUMMIT OF HEADS OF NEAR-CASPIAN STATES STARTED ITS WORK
19 November
Third Summit of Heads of the Near-Caspian States started its work in the capital of Azerbaijan. It is taking place in the President's residence near the center of Baku, the agency reports citing ITAR-TASS. The Presidents of all five near-Caspian countries are participating in the summit: Russia - Dmitry Medvedev, Azerbaijan - Ilham Aliyev, Iran - Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, Kazakhstan - Nursultan Nazarbayev, and Turkmenistan - Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov. The Presidents of the states of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan arrived in the capital of Azerbaijan in the first half of the day and the President of Iran has been in Baku since Wednesday. Two documents are planned to be signed after a three-hour discussion: the agreement on safety in the Caspian Sea and the presidents' joint statement. The agreement in the field of safety in the Caspian Sea is aimed against the new challenges and threats in the region and assumes cooperation of the coastal countries in struggle against transnational criminality, terrorism, distribution of weapons of mass destruction, drug trafficking, and poaching. (Kazakhstan Today)

GEORGIA OFFERS 20 INSTRUCTORS FOR AFGHAN ARMY
21 November
Georgia, which has 950-strong combat unit in Afghanistan, has offered to send 20 instructors to help train the Afghan forces, the Georgian Ministry of Defense said. It said that President Saakashvili voiced the proposal at a meeting of leaders from countries contributing to the Afghan operation on a sideline of NATO Lisbon summit on November 20. "The proposal made by Georgia today is very important," Bacho Akhalaia, the Georgian defense minister, said on November 20. "We offered to send Georgian military instructors who will provide training for the Afghan military in various professions; it might be infantry component, or aviation,” Mr. Akhalaia stated (Civil Georgia)

THREE DEFENDANTS SKIP KYRGYZ EX-PRESIDENT’S TRIAL
22 November
Three defendants on trial along with former Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiev have failed to appear in court and the authorities do not know their whereabouts, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports. The three -- former Prosecutor-General Nurlan Tursunkulov, Bakiev's former chief of staff Kanybek Joroev, and Oksana Malevannaya, the former head of Bakiev's presidential office -- are among 28 people on trial in connection with the deaths of antigovernment protesters in April.The trial in Bishkek's Sports Palace resumed today after it was adjourned last week following rowdy scenes in which some relatives of the victims threatened the defendants, their lawyers, and family members. Our correspondent said today's session was markedly more peaceful. But after the three failed to show up, prosecutors told the court they were also not at their homes, where they had been under house arrest. The judge said the three would be tried in absentia. Bakiev and five other defendants, including one of his brothers and his eldest son, are already being tried in absentia. The judge also turned down a request by 16 of the defendants to be transferred from jail to house arrest. (RFE/RL)

CHINA TO SET UP FACTORIES IN KAZAKHSTAN
22 November
China is planning to put its cheap labour force to work in a new 70,000-strong factory town across the border in Kazakhstan, in a move which will heighten fears of a land grab in the Central Asian country. The factories will be built on a 6,000 hectare Special Economic Zone (SEZ) which Kazakhstan plans to launch next year as part of its £1.6bn land port and trade centre at Khorgos, a border town 220 miles north-east of Almaty, the Kazakh commercial capital. "A Chinese factory from Urumqi will be able to build a factory on the Special Economic Zone," said Askhat Mukhamediev, director of the Khorgos centre. "Goods which come from China before will be brought into the SEZ in the form of raw materials. It will be produced in the SEZ, and exported under the brand 'Made in Kazakhstan'. The use of Chinese manpower will be permitted." Next month, Kazakhstan's parliament is expected to pass a new law on SEZs, which will detail the legal status of this foreign labour, making it easier to bring in workers. "These are strategically-planned steps for expansion from the Chinese side," said Murat Auezov, a former Kazakh ambassador to Beijing, who has long warned of Chinese designs on Kazakhstan's territories. "They will use the production of these goods as a narcotic, because Kazakhstan will want to continue production, and will increase it with the use of Chinese labour. The next step will be expansion of SEZ, and then Kazakhstan will need to provide additional territories." In January, Mr Auezov played a key role in protests against a Chinese proposal to lease 1m hectares of Kazakh land for farming, which forced the Kazakh government to back down. Mr Mukhamediev said the use of Chinese manufacturing expertise and labour would help fulfil Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev's plan to diversify his country's exports beyond raw materials. (Telegraph)

PRIME MINISTER OF KAZAKHSTAN CONFIRMED ARRANGEMENT ON JOINT ACCESSION TO WTO WITH RUSSIA
22 November
The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Karim Masimov, confirmed the arrangement on introduction of Kazakhstan to the World Trade Organization (WTO) along with Russia and on identical conditions. Karim Masimov informed on Friday in an interview to ITAR-TASS after the session of the supreme body of the Customs Union at the level of heads of governments in St. Petersburg, the agency reports. "We have an arrangement that Kazakhstan and Russia will access WTO simultaneously and on identical conditions, which was confirmed today," K. Masimov said. "All parties confirmed these arrangements," he underlined. According to ITAR-TASS, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, answering a question on disagreements at the negotiations at the joint press conference, following the results of the session, said: "There are no disagreements. It is a difficult process of coordination of interests." He also underlined that all arrangements reached at the level of three countries are in line with the WTO requirements. (Kazakhstan Today)

TURKMEN PRESIDENT: CONSENT NEEDED FOR PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION UNDER CASPIAN SEABED
22 November
Turkmen President Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov said Turkmenistan firmly believes that pipeline projects under the Caspian seabed should be implemented only with the consent of those countries, through which sections of these pipelines will pass, local media reported today. He added that the implementation of such projects is possible on the condition that they "will strictly comply with the highest international environmental norms and standards," the Neytralniy Turkmenistan newspaper reported. The Turkmen leader emphasized that the Caspian Sea is a unique natural body of water, whose fate should be of particular concern to all littoral countries. Focusing on the significance of the third Caspian summit in this context, Berdimuhammedov instructed the relevant high-ranking officials to study thoroughly all issues related to problems on the Caspian and the intensification of an effective partnership in the region. "The question of defining the legal status of the Caspian should be resolved solely on the basis of a consensus among the parties and the optimum balance of interests based on universally recognized norms of international law," the Vatan newspaper quoted the president as saying. Turkmenistan, along with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Iran, borders the Caspian, which is rich in hydrocarbons and bioresources. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was necessary to adopt a new agreement on the legal status of the reservoir. The EU believes that Turkmenistan - given its immense gas resources ranking the biggest in the world after Russia, Iran and Qatar - will be able to guarantee energy security through resource diversification. The Trans-Caspian Pipeline, which would link Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan and pass through Turkey to European markets, is regarded as a prospective project in this regard. The Nabucco gas pipeline project, whose assets have grown considerably since major oil and gas companies from the United States and the West arrived in Turkmenistan, is mostly linked with this direction, experts say. Recently, an announcement was made that agreements on the mining and exploration of oil and gas resources on the Turkmen shelf may be concluded with Chevron and Total. Nabucco shareholder's the German RWE has contracts with the Turkmen government. Western observers note that the start of the construction of the East-West gas pipeline, which will connect the reserves of the field with the east Caspian coast, gave a recovery to this process. Recently, Ashgabat announced its readiness to supply 40 billion cubic meters of gas per year for Nabucco, including resources from Yoloten and the Turkmen section of the Caspian Sea where the Malaysian Petronas operates. According to recently released data from the Turkmengeologiya, the resources at Yoloten, which is among the top five biggest fields in the world, are roughly 21 trillion cubic meters of gas. (Trend)

AFGHANISTAN SHIFTS FROM RECONCILIATION AFTER TALIBAN IMPOSTOR REVEALED
23 November
After a man some officials believe to be simply a Pakistani shopkeeper duped NATO and members of the Afghan government into thinking he was one a top Taliban leader, the focus in Afghanistan is shifting from reconciliation and back to the mechanics of the war. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, the day news of the Taliban impostor broke, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was less interested in talking about meetings with the Taliban and more focused on what the NATO summit in Lisbon meant for his country. Indeed, there remain serious questions about the legitimacy of talks with the Taliban following the revelation that NATO and Afghan officials had actually been dealing with a fake. NATO and Afghan leaders reportedly thought they were in talks with Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the Taliban No. 2. Only after flying him from Pakistan to Afghanistan, reportedly providing him with large sums of money, and arranging meetings with key leaders did they realize he was just an ordinary Pakistani shopkeeper posing as the high-level Taliban leader. Some speculate, however, that he may have been a Pakistani spy or an undercover Taliban trying to see what was on the table by posing as a high-level Taliban leader. Taliban leadership have categorically denied any participation in talks since they began, and on Tuesday Karzai denied reports that he’d ever met with Mr. Mansour or anyone claiming to be him. NATO officials say this underscores the difficulty of negotiating with the Taliban. The High Peace Council, appointed by Karzai in September to negotiate with the Taliban, has been widely criticized for lacking anyone with serious ties to the Taliban – a weakness that this latest incident underscores. (csmonitor.com)

AFGHAN LEADER DENIES MEETING 'TOP TALIBAN NEGOTIATOR'
23  November
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has denied meeting a man pretending to be a top Taliban leader, as reported by U.S. media. "The New York Times" has reported that a man claiming to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders of the Taliban, was in fact an impostor. "The Washington Post" said the man was a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta. NATO and Afghan officials told the "Times" that they met the fake Taliban leader three times, and that he was flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace to meet Karzai. A Western diplomat in Kabul told the "Times" the man -- who traveled from Pakistan -- was given "a lot of money" to take part in the talks. One Afghan official was quoted as saying the man could have been sent by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. Karzai told reporters at a press conference today not to accept "propaganda" from the foreign media. (RFE/RL)

SAAKASHVILI, AT EU PARLIAMENT, CALLS FOR DIRECT DIALOGUE WITH KREMLIN
23 November
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in a impassioned speech at the European Parliament on November 23, proposed direct talks with the Kremlin. "I am, ladies and gentlemen, ready for a deep, comprehensive dialogue with my Russian counterpart," Saakashvili asserted. "We will, of course, continue to participate in the Geneva talks, hoping that our pledge today will persuade the Russian Federation to stop blocking these discussions. But we need a political dialogue to start as well." Saakashvili said he recognized past mistakes and failures on the Georgian side, which he did not name, and gave reassurances that Georgia would not resort to force, except "in the case of new attacks and invasion of the 80 percent of Georgian territory that remains under the control of the Georgian government." Saakashvili did call on the EU parliament to qualify the Russian military presence in the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as "illegal." He underlined the fact that the two breakaway regions have received practically no international recognition, including none from any other CIS members, aside from Russia. He said the international community's stance indicates "to the great surprise and the fury of some that the old times are definitely over. It shows that the former captive nations of Soviet times have become strong -- [despite] all the hurdles and problems -- independent states that determine their own policies." The Georgian president was invited to Strasbourg by the speaker of the European parliament, the Polish conservative Jerzy Buzek, with the agreement of all political factions in the legislature. Parliamentary sources told RFE/RL that the presence of the Georgian leader in Strasbourg should be seen as a political gesture by the MEPs, some of whom feel Tbilisi was unfairly sidelined by European governments following the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. (RFE/RL)

SAAKASHVILI: NON-USE OF FORCE PLEDGE 'NOT A SIGN OF WEAKNESS'
23 November
Georgia’s unilateral pledge on non-use of force is “not a sign of weakness”, President Saakashvili said at a news conference after addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg on November 23. “Such a gesture underlines our self-belief… The weak tends to respond by threats or menaces or instability; in our case the opposite holds,” Saakashvili said speaking in French, adding that he was convinced that Georgia and Russia should go down the road of negotiations. “Russia has serious problems in the region and I think it is very much in the interests of Russia to move towards more open relationship,” he said. (Civil Georgia)

MOSCOW RESPONDS TO SAAKASHVILI’S NON-USE OF FORCE PLEDGE
24 November
President Saakashvili’s non-use of force pledge can be “perceived seriously” if only it “is put on paper” and when “it becomes legally binding,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on November 24. “Russia still believes that the road towards ensuring peace and security in Trans Caucasus lies through legally binding commitment on non-use of force between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali, as well as between Tbilisi and Sokhumi,” a statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry reads. In his address to the European Parliament on November 23, President Saakashvili said Georgia was ready for “unilateral initiative to declare that Georgia will never use force to roll back the Russian occupation and to restore its control over the occupied areas.” The Russian Foreign Ministry said that impressions from Saakashvili’sspeech were mixed. “On the one hand, we would like to believe, that Saakashvili’s remarks… reflect Tbilisi’s realization of the fact which has been persistently suggested for many years already by Russia and other members of the international community – that use of force is inadmissible and a crime,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “But the way in which this so called ‘unilateral solemn pledge’ is being delivered cannot but trigger our concern,” it continued. “Saakashvili still tries to convince the international community in the existence of some kind of conflict between Russia and Georgia, instead of speaking about many years of conflict between Tbilisi and peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which as a result of another Georgian forceful adventure in August 2008 ended up with eventual self-determination of these peoples,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. It also said that in the past Georgia had broken its commitments for number of times. “We all remember 'a peace-loving' televised address by Saakashvili on August 7, 2008, just couple of hours before barbarous overnight shelling of Tskhinvali,” it said. Saakashvili’s announcement at the European Parliament is more close to what Moscow was offering recently, in particular making "unilateral declarations" signed separately by Tbilisi, Sokhumi and Tskhinvali on non-use of force pledges. (Civil Georgia)