Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gave a qualified welcome yesterday to the news that Russia had agreed to pull its troops from all of Georgia except two separatist regions.
Saakashvili insisted that any long-term solution to the conflict had to respect his country’s territorial integrity — including the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to pull back from Georgia apart from the two breakaway regions, after talks on Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who led an EU delegation.
But Moscow’s recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was “irrevocable,” Medvedev said.
“We made a choice for ourselves,” Medvedev said. “This choice is final and irrevocable.”
During the talks in Russia, Sarkozy handed Medvedev a letter from Saakashvili promising not to use force again.
“Russia received a guarantee from the European Union and from France as representative of the European Union on non-use of force by the Georgian side,” Medvedev said.
There would be a “complete withdrawal of Russian peacekeeping forces” from zones adjacent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia 10 days after the deployment of the EU observers, he said.
Under the deal brokered by Sarkozy, Medvedev agreed to the deployment of at least 200 EU observers in Georgia by Oct. 1 to monitor the pullout.
Sarkozy, the current EU president, said negotiations on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement — put on hold over the crisis — could resume “as early as October” if Moscow fulfilled the agreed measures.
But speaking later in Georgia he warned that if Russia failed to meet its commitment to a troop withdrawal, the EU would draw its own conclusions.
Washington stuck to its firm line, with US President George W. Bush taking a long-awaited decision to freeze a landmark civilian nuclear agreement with Russia in protest at Moscow’s military moves in Georgia.
“The president intends to notify Congress that he has today rescinded his prior determination regarding the US-Russia agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation,” a statement said.
Meanwhile, a French official said that Sarkozy threatened to walk out of the stormy talks with Russian officials before securing a deal with Medvedev on Monday.
“There were very tense moments,” a senior official in Sarkozy’s office told reporters after the deal was announced.
The original deal said both sides should withdraw to the positions they held before the brief war last month.
At one point in Monday’s talks, while Medvedev was not in the room, Russian officials tried to remove a reference to the Aug. 7 pre-conflict positions, the French official said.
“At that moment, Sarkozy got up and said ‘We’re going. This is not negotiable,’” the official said while traveling to Tbilisi after the Moscow leg of Sarkozy’s trip.
The Russian officials, who included Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, had Medvedev called back into the room, and the row soon faded, the senior official said.
The second agreement reached on Monday retained a reference to the Aug. 7 deployment.
Sarkozy also warned Medvedev against the dangers of Russia’s decision last month to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
“Sarkozy told Medvedev: ‘Beware of the principle of self-determination. If the Russians demand it for Abkhazia and Ossetia, the Chechens could also demand it,’” the source said.
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
COORDINATION, ASSURANCE: Separately, representatives reintroduced a bill that asks the state department to review guidelines on how the US engages with Taiwan US senators on Tuesday introduced the Taiwan travel and tourism coordination act, which they said would bolster bilateral travel and cooperation. The bill, proposed by US senators Marsha Blackburn and Brian Schatz, seeks to establish “robust security screenings for those traveling to the US from Asia, open new markets for American industry, and strengthen the economic partnership between the US and Taiwan,” they said in a statement. “Travel and tourism play a crucial role in a nation’s economic security,” but Taiwan faces “pressure and coercion from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in this sector, the statement said. As Taiwan is a “vital trading
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