Category: Tagliavini Commission

Saakashvili blames NATO for war of August 2008

March 1, 2010 by georgiamedia

Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili has blamed the western military alliance for his country's war with Russia in 2008.

Interviewed by the Russian Vlast magazine the Georgian president (pictured, right, with former US president George W. Bush) said, reports Bloomberg's Business Week, that the decision of NATO to refuse him a "membership action plan" in April 2008 had sent the "wrong signal" to Russian leaders and encouraged them to enact a long planned attack on his country.

The European Union's Tagliavini Commission into the war of August 2008 published their conclusions into who started the conflict in September last year. Blaming Georgia for breaching international law by shelling Tskhinvali in the breakaway province of South Ossetia and so beginning the five days of intense conflict, they also cited Russian provocations and treaty breaches as contributory factors.

President Saakashvili has veered between saying the Commission's report has vindicated him and saying it is a report produced by a team bribed by Russian energy and media giant Gazprom.

The president also said he had a standing invitation to visit US president Barack Obama in Washington DC. Saakashvili's inability or unwillingness to meet western leaders (on his recent trip to London he did not get to see the British Prime Minister) has caused unfavourable comment at home in recent weeks.

A year of going nowhere: attacks on free journalism in Georgia in 2009

February 16, 2010 by georgiamedia

The Committee to Protect Journalists have published a depressing summary of the Saakashvili regime's attacks on media freedom in Georgia in 2009.

While no journalists were killed or imprisoned in Georgia in 2009, press freedom in this small South Caucasus nation stagnated due to persistent state manipulation of news media, particularly television broadcasting. In a speech before the U.N. General Assembly in September, President Mikhail Saakashvili boasted of Georgia’s media pluralism, stating that the country has “27 TV stations.” He failed to mention that most stations have little reach and, notably, that his government and its allies have long sought to control television news content, most recently through aggressive efforts to obstruct the cable affiliates of a station aligned with a leading opponent.

The assessment continues:

Saakashvili had enjoyed strong support from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, but his government's ongoing media manipulation eroded his reputation as a democracy builder. During a visit to Georgia in July, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden urged Saakashvili to make his government more transparent and accountable by fostering independent and professional media. In an October interview with the news agency GHN, Lasha Tugushi, editor of the independent Tbilisi-based daily Rezonansi, said he believed press freedom was declining. "There are no more [national] television debates and discussions, the information programs are worse, and property rights are not regulated and defended," Tugushi said, referring to the government's continued encroachment on privately owned media corporations.

The CPJ say that the government have been engaged in "years-long efforts" to seize control of the national media and discusses the handling of the reporting of the Tagliavini Commission report:

A critical European Union fact-finding report on the August 2008 armed conflict between Russia and Georgia was a failed litmus test for national television. The networks were either silent about the report’s findings or chose to air only conclusions favorable to the Georgian side. The report, written by seasoned diplomat Heidi Tagliavini and issued in October, found that while Russia created various provocations and escalated the war, Georgia bore responsibility for instigating the conflict with its shelling of Tskhinvali. The EU report also called on the media to curb xenophobic sentiments and to provide a balanced view of all sides of the conflict.

In an op-ed piece published in The Guardian of London, the opposition leader [Nino Burjanadze] said administration policies had ensured that coverage of the EU report was one-sided. While opposition voices can get a hearing in newspapers and on cable television, Burdzhanadze said, their impact is diminished due to presidential control over national broadcasting. For two-thirds of the country, national television channels are the only media available, “and all are directed by the president’s inner circle,”

Georgian authorities take step forward with new strategy for breakaway regions

January 27, 2010 by georgiamedia

The Georgian government has finally adopted and published its long-awaited new strategy for the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, putting an emphasis on person-person contact and increased trade as means of winning the territories back to Georgia.

The new strategy does not see Georgia retreat from its existing position of non-recognition of the de facto governments of the breakaways and, while it claims the support of the Tagliavini Commission report in its narrative of the events of August 2008, it conspicuously neglects to even mention the commission's conclusion that Georgian military action led to the outbreak of what became the "August War".

Many opposition figures, such as Irakli Alasania, who once led Georgian negotiations with the administration in the Abkhaz breakaway, have been arguing for a new strategy based on fostering personal contacts and economic relationships. But most are also pessimistic of progress while Mikheil Saakashvili remains in office.

Europe, Saakashvili and Tagliavini: time to recognise the truth?

January 23, 2010 by georgiamedia

Reportedly one of the hopes of the European Union for the Tagliavini Commission and its report was that it would encourage a genuine debate in Georgia about the events of the August War and so help set the state on a more stable path towards peace and reconciliation with the Ossetians and Abkhaz.

If that was really the view it reflected the deep seated naivety in some parts of the Europe about the real nature of Mikheil Saakashvili's government and its willingness to allow genuine debate. Europe has spent six years now telling Saakashvili that he needs to do a better job on democratisation and media freedom in private and then offering excuses for him in public. At times some of the statements by senior EU officials have bordered on the delusional - such as talking of Georgia's "genuine progress" on democratic reform - and so this misjudgement over Tagliavini's internal impact seems entirely believable.

Georgia is not Russia. Journalists who ask inconvenient questions are not gunned down in the street or thrown off high buildings in crudely faked "suicides". But the Georgian state still has a near-complete grip on the three media channels that matter: the national TV stations. They obtained that control by force when they stormed Imedi and now they have it they clearly have no intention of surrendering it but nor have they any real need to return to force: the job is done.

Outside Georgia it has been a different story. Despite a mini-fightback through the medium of Ronald Asmus and his new book on the August War, there are few in the west who now do not see Saakashvili's misjudement and erratic behaviour as major contributions to the start of the military conflict.

At a personal level Saakashvili plainly finds that very difficult to deal with. This week, in Estonia (another foreign country he chose to visit before Kutaisi), he he has gone into overdrive with promoting what is little better than a conspiracy theory to explain his loss of credibility in western capitals. His extraordinary lecture on the subject will likely backfire as it will only confirm the view in the west that he lacks perspective and judgement and seems unable to learn from past mistakes.

His repeated predictions of the inevitability of a new war with Russia will also chill western hearts who now finds themselves propping up a president against the threat of Russian overthrow when that president seems at the same time determined to provoke the very act that will guarantee such an overthrow.

Saakashvili's response to every western warning and rebuff - it has got so bad that even the Estonians, with the Poles the president's least critical supporters, have had to ask him to cool it this week - has been to ramp up his rhetoric yet further. He seems unable or unwilling to grasp that the west can take a view of the conflict in which blame between Russia and Georgia is shared and that not simply all dumped on one head or the other.

Panarama: Portrait of Mikheil Saakashvili from Ivan Panarama on Vimeo.

This process now seems to have reached its apogee in an extraordinary interview Saakashvili has given Ivan Panarama (see video). Once again he compares Russia with Nazi Germany. But he goes further: implicitly comparing Heidi Tagliavini to Neville Chamberlain and stating there were 120,000 Russian troops in South Ossetia when Georgian forces attacked.

In fact this is the Tagliavini Commission's narrative of the military events of August 2008:

Tagliavini (Click here to read)

No fair elections, no membership is NATO's message to Saakashvili

December 4, 2009 by georgiamedia

Despite the upbeat tone set by Georgian ministers in the state controlled and financed media, the message to President Mikheil Saakashvili's government from the NATO-Georgia summit yesterday seems to have been blunt: improve human rights and hold fair elections or forget about joining the club.

Although the US and UK, as the two biggest contributors to the NATO force in Afghanistan, are keen to maintain and develop their military relationship with Georgia it is also clear the alliance as a whole is wary of over-commiting to a partner they seem to regard as volatile.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (pictured here in 2008) opening the meeting said:

"Allies, collectively and bilaterally, are committed to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. But we all know that security climate in the region which is home to Georgia remains fragile. This puts a particular responsibility on the shoulders of all relevant parties, Georgia included. We all understand that your country has suffered a lot during the last years. There is much hardship to overcome, many human wounds have to heal. But reforms and modernization, and a determination to improve neighbourly relations, offer the best prospects of a better future for the Georgian people. NATO will continue to support your reforms, and stand by your territorial integrity."
 

In their closing statement NATO ministers verged the blunt and the certainly the tone suggests that there is no prospect of Georgia getting any closer to NATO membership in the first half of 2010:

"much work remains to be done to implement reforms, and that the Georgian Government, as well as opposition forces, must demonstrate political will in implementing democratic reforms. NATO Ministers noted that they attach great importance to the conduct of free and fair local elections in Georgia in spring 2010. They encouraged Georgia to deepen reforms regarding media freedom and the rule of law. They welcomed Georgia’s decision to conduct a broad review of its security sector, but noted the need for more effective defence planning and financial and human resource management. NGC [NATO Georgia Commission] Ministers welcomed the successful start of the Professional Development Programme for Civilian Personnel of the Georgian Ministry of Defence and Other Security Institutions, managed by NATO. NGC Ministers also welcomed the work that has been done thus far to establish a NATO Liaison Office in Georgia, but noted that further work in this regard is required."
 

Georgia's armed forces have never been commanded by an officer trained at a western military academy - the current commander Devi Chankotadze began his career in the Soviet Red Army and was then also trained by the Chinese People's Liberation Army - so pressure to improve the training of the military cadre and civilian staff is nothing new. But the emphasis on media freedom follows the warnings of the Tagliavini Commission into the August 2008 war with Russia that both country's warped and state-directed media contributed to the conflict by whipping up xenophobia.