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Russian tanks 'enter city in violation of ceasefire'
Martin Bentham in London and Will Stewart in Moscow13 Aug 2008
Georgia today accused Moscow of breaching their ceasefire agreement as Russian tanks were reported to have entered the key city of Gori.
Witnesses described seeing Russian forces setting up checkpoints around the city and moving to occupy an abandoned Georgian artillery base on its outskirts despite the announcement of a peace deal late last night.
There were further reports of looting inside Gori carried out by Russianbacked fighters from South Ossetia, the separatist region of Georgia whose future prompted the hostilities last week.
People fleeing the city, which lies inside Georgia close to the South Ossetian border, said residents' cars were being stolen at gunpoint by the looters, while houses were reportedly being torched and a pall of smoke hung over the market place.
The renewed violence came despite the fragile truce appearing to hold elsewhere in the country, but led to angry protests from Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili who accused Russia of flouting the ceasefire.
"As I speak now, Russian tanks are attacking Gori," he told a news conference in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
Russian forces denied any incursion, saying "there are no Russian peacekeepingunits or forces supporting them in Gori"; earlier Georgian claims have proved unreliable, although a BBC journalist close to the scene reported that tanks were in the city.
Other witnesses described seeing checkpoints set up, including one on the road connecting Gori to Tbilisi, while there were further reports of Russian irregulars carrying out attacks in nearby villages.
The new claims came as Western governments prepared to turned up the diplomatic pressure on Moscow and only hours after a peace plan brokered by French president Nicolas Sarkozy was agreed by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Mr Saakashvili.
After nearly a week of fighting, which is thought to have claimed several thousand lives, an estimated 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
Mr Sarkozy was due to present the peace deal to EU ministers today in a bid to pave the way for its formal adoption by the United Nations Security Council, while Western governments began preparing retaliatory action against Moscow.
The US cancelled a joint naval exercise-with Russia due to take place later this week, saying that there was "no way" that it could co-operate so closely with Moscow in the wake of the Russian aggression.
EU diplomats were also expected to consider a range of symbolic gestures to express their disapproval of Moscow's actions at a meeting today, while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Russian's conduct in Georgia had jeopardised its chances of integration into international institutions.
"There are any number of opportunities for Russia to reverse course and to demonstrate that it is trying to behave according to 21st century principles," she said.
"But I can assure you that Russia's international reputation and what role Russia can play in the international community is very much at stake here."
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "The sight of Russian tanks rolling into parts of a sovereign country on its neighbouring borders will have brought a chill down the spine of many people, rightly.
"That is a reversion to not just Cold War politics, it is a nineteenth century way of doing politics. I think it is very, very important at a European level, but also at the UN, that we assert that that is simply not the way in which international relations can be run in the twenty-first century."
Reader views (1)
Rephrase Mister Millibund (last sentence): "it is very, very important ... that we remember that in extremis this is the only way to be taken seriously, in any century..." (as witnessed by sterling UK interventions over recent years, if always a little later than the ideal).
- Steve, T Wells, England, 13/08/2008 13:58
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