CIA REPORTEDLY CONCLUDED BOMBING OF U.S EMBASSY IN TBILISI HAS TIES TO MOSCOW
U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed Russian ties to the explosion near the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi last year, the Washington Times reported on July 27th. Russia termed the publication an attempt to stir a new “propaganda hype”.
A bomb blown up 60 meters from the U.S. embassy’s exterior wall on September 22, 2010, did not cause death, injury or damage to the embassy. The incident, however, was one in a series of 12 accomplished or attempted bombings over a year throughout Georgia.
An identical design of unpacked military-grade explosives, known as RDX in the U.S. and hexogen in Georgia, corroborated that they came from the same source, the Georgian Interior Ministry reported. It said that an examination of the arrested suspects’ cell phones led the investigators to the Russian military officer Yevgeni Borisov, who was serving in the breakaway region Abkhazia when the series of bomb blasts occurred in Georgia. The national court found Borisov guilty of cooperating with the Russian special services to organize terrorist attacks against the Georgian state and sentenced him to 30 years in absentia.
According to the Washington Times, the classified report produced by U.S. intelligence agencies in December 2010 verified the findings of the Georgian side, and thereby the connection between Russia’s military intelligence and the explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi. The document became available to the members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees in January.
The Washington Times publication is based on statements from two U.S. officials who are familiar with the report, and supports the facts put forth by the Georgian Interior Ministry. “It is written without hedges, and it confirms the Georgian account”, that the bombing was coordinated by the GRU, Russian military intelligence, one of the U.S. officials said.
In response to the publication, Russia’s State Secretary and Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said that “the Washington Times is to trigger a second propaganda wave around issues that have already been discussed with American and Georgian representatives at the beginning of this year”. Karasin said the Russian side has conducted a qualified investigation and reported to both the American and Georgian officials, thus “all these rounds of allegations are absolutely false and baseless”, he said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington intend to learn more about the details of the incident. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s Republican whip, said that congress should probe the matter through the intelligence committees and discuss the findings carefully. This is important as the U.S. administration supports Russia’s membership in the WTO and plans to reach a cooperative missile defense agreement with Moscow, the Washington Times reported.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brought up the issue with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov first in February in Munich when they signed the New START arms pact, and then on July 13 when the counterparts sealed an agreement on child adoptions, the publication informed.
However, from the perspective of some U.S. intelligence officials, the State Department’s reaction to the issue was “weak” given the fact that Borisov continues to operate in Abkhazia: “The fact that this GRU major is still at large in Abkhazia should tell you all you need to know about how effective our response has been”, the Washington Times quoted one U.S. intelligence official.
Recently, the director of information and analysis for the Georgian Interior Ministry, Shota Utiashvili, personally shared details of the embassy bombing attempt with the State Department and Pentagon officials, though U.S. officials had then not reached consensus on the responsibility for the Tbilisi blast, according to the Washington Times.
The report of the U.S. intelligence services is favorable to the Georgian government, which has previously found it difficult to convince international and domestic skeptics that the numerous terrorist attacks detected in Georgia over a year were exclusively masterminded by the Kremlin. Denying the charges, Moscow accuses Tbilisi of “spy mania” manifested in a continuous search for Russian traces in all crimes. Some Georgian opposition parties, in turn, claim that the authorities deftly use the argument of “spy networks” to divert public attention from social problems and justify its control of media sources. Given this sort of criticism, the CIA’s highly classified report serves Tbilisi’s interests very well. Unfavorable for Georgia, however, is the “weak” reaction of the U.S. to the possible instances of Russian state-sponsored terrorism.
Therefore, the main question is whether the corroboration of alleged links between the Russian government and the attempted bombing will to any extent bring about a reconsideration of the U.S.-Russia reset policy, one element of which is a de facto arms embargo on Georgia; or alternatively, whether a weak U.S. reaction to the CIA findings may cast a shadow on the partnership between the U.S. and Georgia.
