Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on
Wednesday defended the diplomatic recognition of breakaway Georgian regions South Ossetia and Abkhazia as NATO repeated its demand for the decision to be reversed, dpa reported.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy urged Moscow to adhere fully to the ceasefire
agreement reached with Georgia as the West stepped up its pressure on the
Kremlin leader.
In the Black Sea, a Georgia-bound US naval vessel loaded with relief supplies
changed course in order to avoid a confrontation with Russian warships
patrolling the area.
Medvedev told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that his country was adhering to
the six-point plan agreed with Sarkozy last week to defuse tensions in the
volatile Caucasus region, the Kremlin said.
Merkel disagreed and repeated her criticism of Russia's action, a German
government spokesman said after the two leaders discussed the issue over the
telephone Wednesday morning.
The chancellor saw the continuing Russian presence in Georgia outside the two regions where the two sides fought a brief war in mid-August as a
serious contravention of the six-point plan.
"I made clear that I would have expected that one would discuss the issue
in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) or in the UN
security council, before unilateral recognition," Merkel said.
Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union,
urged Russia to carry out a speedy withdrawal of its troops to the positions
they were at before the outbreak of hostilities.
"Russia's unilateral decision to redraw the borders of Georgia is unacceptable," said the president, who has called a special EU summit on Georgia for September 1.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned Russia not to start a new Cold
War, and suggested the European Union and NATO should review their relations
with Moscow.
"Russia is not yet reconciled to the new map of this region," he
said. Medvedev's "unilateral attempt to redraw the map marks a moment of
real significance," Miliband said in a speech in the Ukraine capital Kiev.
"The Russian president says he is not afraid of a new Cold War. We don't
want one. He has a big responsibility not to start one."
Miliband said the EU and NATO should respond to such "aggression"
with "hard-headed engagement," and suggested the EU and NATO needed
to review relations with Russia.
NATO on Wednesday called on Russia to reverse its recognition of the
independence, warning Moscow that Georgia's security and stability were
"important" to the alliance.
"Russia's decision violates the many UN Security Council resolutions it
has endorsed regarding Georgia's territorial integrity, and is inconsistent
with the fundamental OSCE principles on which stability in Europe is
based," said a statement released by the North Atlantic Council,
which brings together the ambassadors of NATO's 26 member states.
The European Union is to send a fact-finding mission as close to Georgia's conflict zones as possible in order to assess the practicalities of sending ceasefire
monitors to the region, officials in Brussels said.
The OSCE is to discuss sending up to 100 addition observers to Geoergia at a
meeting in Vienna on Thursday attended by Georgian Foreign Minister Ekaterine
Tkeshelashvili.
In an article published in the London-based Financial Times, Medvedev Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili "a madman" and issued a thinly veiled
call for him resign
"I sincerely hope that the Georgian people ... will one day have leaders
they deserve, who care about their country and who develop mutually respectful
relations with all the peoples in the Caucasus," he wrote.
Medvedev compared the situation in South Ossetia and Abkhazia with that in
Kosovo, accusing western countries of rushing to recognize Kosovo's
"illegal declaration of independence" from Serbia in February this
year.
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