A Georgian-style Bar-B-Que

[Smurf-Herder]

It should be interesting, the US sending ships in to deliver aid, when the Russians have put up a Russian flag and refused to leave the port at Poti.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/08/24/article-1048293-0266D86D00000578-144_468x669.jpg

Fuel train explodes near abandoned Georgian military base after 'hitting landmine'

A fuel train exploded today on Georgia's main East-West rail line after it appeared to have hit a landmine, police say.

A Reuters correspondent saw black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the train in the village of Skra, 3 miles west of Gori, which was abandoned by Russian troops on Friday after a 10-day occupation.

Officials said the train was on the main track of the line linking eastern and western Georgia, a vital trade route for oil exports from Azerbaijan to European markets.

The explosion occurred near an abandoned Georgian military base.

Emergency services managed to unhitch 19 wagons and move them away from the fire, averting possible further explosions.

Officials said the train was on the main track of the railway line linking Eastern and Western Georgia - a vital trade route for oil exports from Azerbaijan to European markets.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

'According to very preliminary information, a train carrying fuel exploded on the railway, which we think was mined,' Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told Reuters.

There was no independent confirmation of Utiashvili's comments.

The line runs through the capital Tbilisi before splitting in three and running to the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi and southwest to just short of the Turkish border.

Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze said: 'We should find out first how big the fire is and how soon it will be extinguished, in order to assess the damage.

'But the railway is vital, not just for the Georgian economy but for the economies of neighbouring countries.'

The incident comes after Georgian police were last night checking for landmines on major roads in the wake of thousands of retreating Russian tanks.

They warned refugees that they could not guarantee their safety in the Gori area as they returned to destroyed homes and looted shops.

And, in a tense stand-off, at least four Nato warships have gathered in the Black Sea.

Another three are expected imminently.

A US destroyer and a Polish frigate were the latest arrivals late on Friday, and this followed two warships from Germany and Spain.

Moscow yesterday warned it would ‘respond swiftly to any provocations’ against its fleet. But Nato said the ships were on ‘routine’ exercises that had been planned for more than a year.

America, France and the UK accused Russia of breaking its ceasefire agreement, creating buffer zones by stationing 2,600 troops around the disputed areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Russians are defiantly holding on to control of the major trading port of Poti, putting a stranglehold on the Georgian economy.

Critics of the ceasefire negotiated by French president Nicolas Sarkozy said the wording about buffer zones was too vague.

Russia still holds the main airbase at Senaki and has warned it could send more troops in if Georgia’s armed forces show signs of retaliation.

White House spokesman Gordon Johnroe said that US President George W Bush and France's Nicolas Sarkozy had agreed in a telephone conversation that Russia was "not in compliance with the ceasefire and that they need to come into compliance now."

Mr Johnroe said: 'Compliance means compliance with that plan. We haven't seen that yet. It's my understanding that they have not completely withdrawn from areas considered undisputed territory, and they need to do that.'

The top U.S. general in Europe, John Craddock, condemned the pullout as 'far too little, far too slow'.

The Georgian parliament is due to decide whether South Ossetia and Abkhazia should get the independence they demand.

Fighting broke out two weeks ago after Georgia tried to retake the Russian-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia, provoking an overwhelming counter-attack from Moscow.

Russia has made clear it intends to maintain a substantial 'peacekeeping' force in a large buffer zone bordering South Ossetia and a second pro-Russia rebel province in the west, Abkhazia.

Georgia says this violates the agreement, brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which ended this month's fighting.

There was more concern when Russian soldiers used an excavator to dig a trench at a checkpoint guarded by troops and armoured personnel carriers outside the Black Sea port of Poti, over 120 miles west of the main conflict zone.

U.S. officials regard a Russian withdrawal from the Poti area, where Georgia's main east-west highway reaches the coast, as a key test of Moscow's commitment to fulfilling a French-brokered peace plan.

Georgia fears Russia could take advantage of the vague wording of the ceasefire deal, by using officially-designated peacekeeping forces to control roads and railways and keep a stranglehold on the Georgian economy.

The West is concerned over oil and gas pipelines running across a country seen in Moscow as part of Russia's historic sphere of influence.

A Georgian official complained: 'There are some checkpoints where one day they are federal troops and the next day peacekeepers.'

The deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff, Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said remaining checkpoints in the border zone were permanent.

On August 16, an explosion downed a bridge on the rail line further east near the town of Kaspi - a district in Georgia's Shida Kartli region. Russia denied Georgian accusations that it was behind the attack. Georgia offered Azerbaijan an alternative route via an old line.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1048293/Pictured-Fuel-train-explodes-near-abandoned-Georgian-military-base-hitting-landmine.html

[disrupter]

We invaded Iraq to take the oil.

Is it such a surprise that Russia is likely trying to do similar things in their neighboring regions?

We had to travel half way around the globe & squander 3 Trillion dollars to meddle in other people's country.

Or is your head too far up your ass to recognize your twin?

[Smurf-Herder]

Georgian Civilians Tell of Miserable Conditions as War Captives

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 24, 2008; Page A17

RUSTAVI, Georgia, Aug. 23 -- Georgian civilians captured and recently freed by Russian and South Ossetian forces on Saturday described beatings, forced labor and miserable living conditions in prison.

Georgian officials said that 79 Georgian civilians have been released over the past few days but that at least 75 civilians, almost all of them young men, remain in captivity in Tskhinvali, capital of the separatist territory of South Ossetia.

The former prisoners, half a dozen of whom were interviewed at a school serving as temporary housing in this industrial city, said they were seized from their homes or as they fled advancing Russian and South Ossetian forces. Some said they were held for as many as 12 days at a jail in Tskhinvali.

The detainees, many of them elderly fruit farmers from villages along Georgia's northern border, said male inmates were forced to clean streets and bury the war dead, and occasionally endured beatings that left them with bruises and welts. More than 100 men and women were packed into a cell with a single toilet, they said.

"I thought they would kill us. I was very much afraid," said Manuna Gogidze, 48.

Gogidze said she and 15 others were forced out of her neighbor's cellar on Aug. 8 and lined up against a wall. A South Ossetian militiaman was pointing a cocked rifle at them when another fighter intervened, she said. They were then loaded into a truck and taken north.

The inmates' stories could not be independently verified, though people interviewed separately gave consistent accounts. South Ossetian and Russian officials have in the past denied abusing Georgian detainees. A Kremlin spokesman, who would not give his name, said only that prisoners held by the South Ossetians were treated according to "acceptable standards." A spokesman for the South Ossetian government could not be reached for comment.

The conflict began Aug. 7 when Georgian forces invaded disputed South Ossetia and Russian forces swiftly pushed them back, seizing as much as a third of Georgian land. Despite Russia's withdrawal Friday from broad swaths of Georgian territory, major issues remain, such as the continued presence of Russian forces in Georgia, the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia -- another section of Georgia seeking independence -- and the return of prisoners captured during the war.

Saturday also brought renewed warnings of further military conflict, as Georgian soldiers, ordered to bases outside the combat zone after being forced from South Ossetia by Russian forces two weeks ago, returned to the frontline Georgian city of Gori, which the Russians abandoned a day earlier.

With Russian troops stationed just a few miles north, it was the closest the two armed forces had come to each other since a cease-fire was reached more than a week ago.

"Georgian units are concentrated in the central part of the republic and are preparing for further actions," Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of the Russian general staff, said at a Saturday briefing. "Georgian special forces are setting up arms caches, in order, among other things, to carry out provocations on the territory of South Ossetia and neighboring districts."

Georgian officials denied any desire for further fighting. 'This is a false accusation trying to smoke-screen their military presence," said Alexander Lomaia, head of Georgia's National Security Council. "I categorically deny any regrouping of our troops."

Georgian forces returning to Gori found two of their large bases crumbled by the Russians, who detonated explosives as they left the city Friday evening. The Georgians deactivated mines planted against the support columns of a third large base. Still, the facility was ransacked and burned. Everything of value had been destroyed or stolen.

"They are pigs. They live in the Stone Age," Gen. Zaza Gogava, the Georgian army's chief of staff, said of the Russians. "Eighty percent of everything we had here is gone. But if we need to, we can still fight."

Russian troops continued to man checkpoints Saturday along the main road leading north from Gori to Tskhinvali, in violation of the terms of the French-brokered cease-fire agreement, Georgian officials said. Russia calls the soldiers "peacekeepers," and says they are authorized to remain in place under a provision of the accord that allows for forces to "monitor" the conflict zone.

Russian forces also remain in the western port city of Poti, far inside undisputed Georgian territory.

Meanwhile, Georgian and South Ossetian officials continued to negotiate the release of the remaining Georgian captives. Georgia says that it has returned all Russians and Ossetians captured in the fighting.

Lomaia said that in exchange for the Georgian civilians, the South Ossetians have demanded the release of 14 convicted criminals held in Georgian prisons, including those who carried out a 2006 car bombing in Gori that killed three officers and two civilians.

"None of the people they want have anything to do with the current conflict," Lomaia said. "We may release some of them, but we can't release terrorists."

Some of the recently released Georgians, nearly all of whom were women, declined to speak to a reporter because they were concerned about the safety of their husbands, fathers or sons still held. Those in custody were as young as 12 and as old as 95, they said.

Tina Mebienidze, 60, from the Georgian village of Kekhui, said she fled north to Tskhinvali during the fighting and was rounded up with other Georgians by the local police.

"The guards would throw scraps of bread into the cell full of people and say, 'Eat it, you pigs,' " she said. "They had no reason to hold us. We asked them, 'You burned our houses, what more do you want?' "

Giorgi Gogia of Human Rights Watch, who also interviewed the former prisoners Saturday, said, "It is very clear that these people were unlawfully detained on the basis of their ethnicity." Gogia said the "ghastly conditions that these people have been kept in" were a "violation of international law."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/23/ST2008082302458.html

[disrupter]

And how many South Ossetians were killed by Georgian Troops when they attacked it that started all this?
1000, 2000, more?

You are such a one sided lying propagandist, Smurfy.

A shill for corporate liars.

[Binky]

We invaded Iraq to take the oil.

Is it such a surprise that Russia is likely trying to do similar things in their neighboring regions?

We had to travel half way around the globe & squander 3 Trillion dollars to meddle in other people's country.

Or is your head too far up your ass to recognize your twin?



:lmao2: :lmao2: Dis.......you crack me up. For once we are in agreement, except for the fact that Smurks twin may be in the lower regions of his anatomy. :taunt:

[disrupter]

Neocon gangsters try to hide their greed, violence, & other abominations behind false claims of humanitarianism.

They are such shameless, seemingly guileless liars.

They must be like totally multi-personalitied in their heads,
where their base personality is completely satanic,
and then this other, clueless personality shows up at press conferences where they actually believe all their lies.

I am boggled that they are such convincing liars.
It is like a special, pathological kind of insanity.

Like a lot of religions engender.
Permitting any kind of unethical treachery in the name of some evil corrupt deity.

I guess that is the Ultimate Political Correctness,
when you won't admit, even to yourself, just how evil the god or power you follow is.

Seems to me someday it is bound to bite you in the ass.
All the way to tortured oblivion.

[Smurf-Herder]

And how many South Ossetians were killed by Georgian Troops when they attacked it that started all this?
1000, 2000, more?

You are such a one sided lying propagandist, Smurfy.

A shill for corporate liars.


According to Human Rights Watch - only 44 people died before the Russians invaded.

According to Human Rights Watch - Russia drastically exagerrated everything, to spur on South Ossetian paramilitary war crimes against Georgians.

[Moby]

According to Human Rights Watch - only 44 people died before the Russians invaded.
Is 44 an acceptable number?

[Smurf-Herder]

Is 44 an acceptable number?

You're sidetracking the point. Where is the evidence of a genocide, as the Russians put it? The Russians are guilty of far more than what their supposed excuse consists of.