[A-List] Russian imperialism: Georgia

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Putin threatens to invade Georgia

Ultimatum demands purge of Chechens holed up in Caucasus

Ian Traynor in Moscow
Friday September 13, 2002
The Guardian

President Vladimir Putin has told world leaders that Russian forces
might invade or bomb Georgia unless the authorities there acted promptly
to "destroy" Chechen "terrorists" holed up in the Caucasus mountains,
the Kremlin said yesterday.

After an ultimatum from Mr Putin to Georgia's President Eduard
Shevardnadze threatening Russian incursions into Georgia, the Russian
president informed Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, US, Chinese,
British, and French leaders, and the member states of the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe that Russian patience was running
out.

While Russian sources said no actions were expected immediately,
newspapers suggested that Mr Shevardnadze had been given a month to root
out the Chechen rebel fighters who control the Pankisi gorge, north-east
of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. If he failed, Russian special forces
and helicopter gunships would go in.

"As regards terrorism, we've got more claims on Shevardnadze than on
Saddam Hussein," the Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, told a
closed session of the Russian parliament, according to MPs present.

The sabre-rattling represents the strongest threats toward Georgia to
date and was deliberately timed to coincide with the September 11
anniversary.

Mr Putin's language echoed President George Bush's rhetoric on terrorism
and Iraq, although he pointedly remarked that he was not seeking "regime
change" in Tbilisi.

"It's extremely serious when the president of such a country [Russia]
uses the language of threat," Mr Shevardnadze said. Russia has
repeatedly accused the Georgians of harbouring terrorists, refusing to
extradite suspects, and indirectly facilitating attacks on Russia.

"If the Georgian authorities do not undertake concrete actions aimed at
destroying terrorists, and if militants continue their raids into Russia
from Georgia, Russia will undertake appropriate measures to counter this
terrorist threat," Mr Putin declared.

Critics said that if the Russians acted on their threats, they could
become bogged down in a widening war in the Caucasus on the kind of
difficult terrain ideally suited to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

Amid the escalating tension between Russia and Georgia, a flurry of
emergency meetings were held in Tbilisi and Moscow. Mr Shevardnadze
requested a phone conversation with Mr Putin, but was rebuffed by the
Kremlin.

At his Black sea holiday retreat in Sochi on Wednesday, Mr Putin held a
session with the defence minister, army chief of staff, and security
service chief, and ordered the military to draw up a hit-list of Chechen
bases in Georgia.

The defence ministry said yesterday that the list would be finalised
this week. Moscow and Tbilisi have long been at odds over Chechnya,
whose mountainous southern border abuts on Georgia.

A prominent Chechen warlord, Ruslan Gelayev, regularly uses Georgia as a
base and source of supplies.

The Pankisi is home to thousands of indigenous Chechens as well as
guerrilla fighters and refugees fleeing the war.

Mr Shevardnadze's writ does not run in the gorge although the Americans
sent military instructors earlier this year to train Georgian special
forces seeking to regain control of the area.

Mr Shevardnadze also ordered security forces into the rugged region last
month.

The Russians have bombed Georgian territory at least three times this
summer, denying all sorties and eliciting protest from Washington.

Mr Putin invoked the UN anti-terrorism resolution triggered by the
September 11 attacks and the UN charter's article 51 on self-defence to
justify his threat.

Washington usually responds toughly to Russian threats against Georgia,
but in this case Mr Putin may be calculating that he will be given carte
blanche in return for not blocking any US military action against Iraq.

Islamist fighters are present in the Chechen rebel ranks, and the US and
Russia contend that al-Qaida fugitives from Afghanistan have found
shelter in the gorge.

The relationship between Russia and Georgia has long been the worst
between any two post-Soviet states.

The Russian elite is viscerally contemptuous of Mr Shevardnadze, whom
they blame for the loss of the Soviet Union.

But since his glory days as Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign minister, Mr
Shevardnadze has presided over a failing, fractured, and corrupt state.