Associated Press
August 28, 2008 3:00 p.m.
DUSHANBE, Tajikistan -- Russia's president appealed to the leaders of China and four Central Asian countries for support Thursday amid the fallout over Moscow's invasion of Georgia and its recognition of the country's separatist regions.
Speaking at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in this impoverished country, President Dmitry Medvedev called Georgia the aggressor in the conflict and said support for Russia would serve as a 'serious signal for those who are trying to justify the aggression.'
Mr. Medvedev's appeal came as Western leaders accuse Russia of using excessive force by sending troops into Georgia earlier this month after a Georgian crackdown on the pro-Russian South Ossetia. European nations and the U.S. have also criticized Russian troops' continued presence in Georgia near the two separatist regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Moscow's recognition of them as independent republics.
Russian leaders, meanwhile, have blamed NATO expansion and Western support for Georgia for raising the specter of a new Cold War.
China and the other Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan -- were expected to stop short of endorsing Mr. Medvedev's recognition of the regions.
The Asian alliance was created in 2001 as a forum for its members to improve regional coordination on terrorism and border security.
Mr. Medvedev discussed the situation in Georgia with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalia Timakova said.
China has traditionally been wary of supporting separatist movements, mindful of its own problems with Tibet and what it describes as radicals seeking to establish a Muslim state in the western territory of Xinjiang. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying 'the situation in the region .. should be resolved in dialogue.'
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, told reporters Wednesday that China's refusal to recognize South Ossetia or Abkhazia did not mean that China was joining Western opposition to Russia's actions in Georgia.
Meanwhile, Russian forces turned over 12 Georgian soldiers on the border of one of the separatist provinces under its control Thursday. The release along the Inguri River separating Abkhazia from Georgia proper was a small conciliatory gesture amid the high tensions and belligerent posturing of the weeks following the end of the fighting.
The soldiers, who were detained Aug. 18 in the seaport of Poti, appeared unharmed and some were smiling.
Also on Thursday, Georgia's foreign minister said ethnic Georgians were being cleared from their homes in South Ossetia, the country's other separatist province. Eka Tkeshelashvili described the forced moves as ethnic cleansing, though she did not specify who she was accusing of carrying it out.
She spoke Thursday in Vienna at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Russian troops remain at checkpoints well into Georgia, saying that a cease-fire agreement allows them to occupy 'security zones' outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Escalating the tensions, South Ossetia on Thursday claimed to have shot down an unmanned Georgian spy plane in its territory. Georgia's Interior Ministry denied the report. |
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