Haaretz: the Georgia/Russia/Israeli story

This is a most enlightening article (culled from the list on Madsen's website.)

Here are a few intriguing paragraphs:

Last update - 13:15 14/08/2008

Georgia president denies Israel halted military aid due to war
By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili denied on Wednesday night that Israel has suspended its military aid to the country. "I haven't heard anything about that, and I haven't had time to think about that issue for some days," he told Haaretz.

Saakashvili said he is aware of problems with supplying the pilotless drones that his army ordered from Israeli companies, but not of the stopping of any other shipments of military aid.

"The Israeli weapons have proved very effective," he said at a press conference at his office. When asked whether the Israeli arms played a role in the military successes he claimed the Georgian army had achieved, he joked: "Are you asking me as a representative of Elbit or of Israel Aerospace Industries?"

To a reporter's question about Jews who have fled the fighting and come to Israel, he said: "We have two Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war [Defense Minister David Kezerashvili], and the other with negotiations [State Minister for Territorial Integration Temur Yakobashvili], and that is the Israeli involvement here: Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews."

Yakobashvili is actually not an Israeli citizen. Saakashvili's statements are part of his government's attempt to bring other countries into its war against Russia. During the briefing, Saakashvili noted that he is in constant contact with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He promised that U.S. warships would be docking in Georgian ports within a few days to make sure they remain open.

[. . .]

Yakobashvili claimed the Georgian forces had destroyed Russia's 58th army and downed 17 planes and three helicopters (data unsubstantiated by other sources). Eventually they had to retreat, he said, because "Russia deployed 30,000 soldiers and a thousand tanks. Our people are not suicidal � we don't want our soldiers to remain in the field and be killed by Russian planes."

The minister claimed that the Abkhazian minority had carried out "ethnic cleansing" in that breakaway region in recent years by expelling members of other ethnic groups, and had supplied weapons to separatists in Ossetia for attacks on Georgian villages.

He was in Tskhinvali, Ossetia, last week, hours before fighting broke out there. "The separatists fired at Georgian villages. We returned fire and asked the Russians to order the Ossetians to stop. The Russian representative told me we have to agree to a total cease-fire and that President Saakashvili had issued such an order to our army, and we
did not return fire, even when they bombarded two of our villages. I told the president we should pay the price, just let there be peace. But when we found out that they were
continuing to transfer more weapons through the Roki Tunnel [between Russia and Ossetia], we had to attack. It was a matter of screwing or being screwed."

Despite the Russian army's advance toward Tbilisi on Wednesday, Yakobashvili said he believes the cease-fire reached through French mediation will hold.

I enboldened that line about a total cease fire because I'd read earlier (in an excellent article in the Independent) that that very Russian demand at the UN was what caused the US and Britain to block any Security Council talks. Here's the end of that article:

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a Russian-drafted statement.

The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the US, Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.

The Georgian attack came just hours after Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire in a television broadcast late Thursday in which he also urged South Ossetian separatist leaders to enter talks on resolving the conflict.

Georgian officials later blamed South Ossetian separatists for thwarting the cease-fire by shelling Georgian villages in the area.