Georgian Troops Move to Retake Rebel Province

Article by: the Associated Press

Tbilisi, Georgia - Russian troops moved into South Ossetia hours after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned Georgia that its attack on the breakaway region would draw retaliation, Russian television reported Friday.

The Russian move comes after Georgian troops launched a major military offensive earlier Friday to regain control over South Ossetia and the president accused Russia, which has close ties to the separatists, of bombing Georgian territory.

The fighting in South Ossetia has raised fears of an all-out war that could draw in Russia, which has peacekeepers in the region. Putin said an unspecified number of the peacekeepers have been wounded.

Russia's Channel 1 television showed a convoy of Russian tanks which it said entered South Ossetia. The tanks were reportedly expected to reach the provincial capital, Tskhinvali, in a few hours.

There was no immediate comment from Georgian officials.
Putin had earlier said the Georgian attack will draw retaliation and the Defense Ministry pledged to protect South Ossetians, most of whom have Russian citizenship.
An Associated Press reporter saw tanks and other heavy weapons concentrating on the Russian side of the border with South Ossetia and villagers were fleeing into Russia.

"I saw them (the Georgians) shelling my village," said Maria, who gave only her first name. She looked shocked and was reluctant to speak. She said she and other villagers spent the night in a field and then fled toward the Russian border as the fighting escalated.

NATO has called for an immediate end to fighting. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he is seriously concerned about the fighting and that the alliance is closely following the situation.

Separatist officials in South Ossetia said 15 civilians had been killed in fighting overnight. Georgian officials said seven civilians were wounded in bombing raids by Russia.

South Ossetia officials said Georgia attacked with aircraft, armor and heavy artillery. Georgian troops fired missiles at the regional capital, Tskhinvali, an official said, and many buildings were on fire. The Russian news agency Interfax said a hospital was hit by Georgian shelling.

Full Mobilization

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russian aircraft bombed several Georgian villages and other civilian facilities.
"A full-scale aggression has been launched against Georgia," Saakashvili said in a televised statement.
He also announced a full military mobilization with reservists being called into action.

Seven civilians were wounded when three Russian Su-24 jet bombers flew into Georgia and bombed the town of Gori and the villages of Kareli and Variani, Deputy Interior Minister Eka Sguladze said at a briefing.

She said four Russian jets later bombed Gori, the hometown of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, but that raid didn't cause any casualties.

Saakashvili urged Russia to immediately stop bombing Georgian territory. "Georgia will not yield its territory or renounce its freedom," he said.
A senior Russian diplomat in charge of the South Ossetian conflict, Yuri Popov, dismissed the Georgian claims of Russian bombings as "disinformation," the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

Moscow Denounces 'Dirty Adventure'

Russia's Defense Ministry denounced the Georgian attack as a "dirty adventure." "Blood shed in South Ossetia will weigh on their conscience," the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.
"We will protect our peacekeepers and Russian citizens," it said without elaboration.

Georgia, which borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the breakup of the Soviet Union. The country has angered Russia by seeking NATO membership - a bid Moscow regards as part of a Western effort to weaken its influence in the region.

Saakashvili long has pledged to restore Tbilisi's rule over South Ossetia and another breakaway province, Abkhazia. Both regions have run their own affairs without international recognition since splitting from Georgia in the early 1990s and built up ties with Moscow.

Most residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have Russian passports. An open war could prompt Russian to send in more forces under the claim of protecting its citizens.

Putin Warns of 'Retaliatory Actions'

Putin, speaking in televised remarks Friday during his trip to the opening of the Beijing Olympics, said Georgia's military action causes "grave concern and it will certainly lead to retaliatory actions."

Saakashvili said government troops have seized the outskirts of Tskhinvali and are fighting for control of the center. Georgian forces also have seized several villages around the capital.

Gen. Mamuka Kurashvili, a Georgian military officer in charge of operations in the region, said on Rustavi 2 television that Georgian forces were moving to "establish constitutional order in the region."

The leader of Russia's province of North Ossetia rushed to Tskhinvali. "We are jointly organizing defenses here," Teimuraz Mamsurov said in the city, according to the Interfax news agency.

Mamsurov said hundreds of volunteers from North Ossetia were streaming across the border into South Ossetia, Interfax said. It also quoted the separatist leader of Abkhazia as saying that some 1,000 volunteers from his region were heading to South Ossetia.

Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said Georgian officials were doing everything they could to avoid casualties and the destruction of property.

But Boris Chochiyev, a minister in the South Ossetian government, said that Georgian troops shelled the center of Tskhinvali with truck-launched missiles. He asked the Russian government to defend South Ossetians.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Boris Malakhov called on Tbilisi to commit itself to peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Yakobashvili said Friday that Georgia was ready to negotiate, but claimed the South Ossetian officials were dragging their feet in starting talks.

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a Russian-drafted statement.
The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the United States Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.

"We think that this is a very serious error of judgment and political blunder," Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said of the council members' disagreement. "I hope that the Georgian side will reconsider its reckless actions in the area of the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict."

The Georgian attack came just hours after Saakashvili announced a unilateral cease-fire in a television broadcast late Thursday in which he also urged South Ossetian separatist leaders to enter talks on resolving the conflict.
Georgian officials later blamed South Ossetian separatists for thwarting the cease-fire by shelling Georgian villages in the area.

Worst Fighting Since 1992

The fighting was the worst outburst of hostilities in the region since it won a de-facto independence in a war that ended in 1992.
Russia has soldiers in South Ossetia as peacekeeping forces, but Georgia alleges they back the separatists. Russia also was criticized by the West as provoking tensions by sending warplanes over South Ossetia last month.

Most of South Ossetia, which is roughly 1.5 times the size of Luxembourg, has been under the control of an internationally unrecognized separatist government since 1992. Georgian forces hold several swaths of it.

Relations between Georgia and Russia worsened notably this year as Georgia pushed to join NATO and Russia dispatched additional peacekeeper forces to Abkhazia.

US Draws Russian Fire, Signing Missile Defense Deal

Prague - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed Tuesday what she called a "landmark" missile defense deal with the Czech Republic, drawing immediate condemnation and threats from Russia. The accord permits the siting of a tracking radar station on Czech soil as part of an extended US missile shield that Washington says is necessary to ward off potential attacks by so-called "rogue" states such as Iran. Moscow immediately threatened to respond with "military resources" to what it sees as a threat on its doorstep from the proposed system.

"If a US strategic anti-missile shield is deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military resources," a statement from the foreign ministry said.

But the United States said Wednesday that Russia and Europe should be "equal partners" in its planned missile defense.

"We seek strategic cooperation on preventing missiles from rogue nations, like Iran, from threatening our friends and allies," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "We will continue to have a dialogue with the Russians."

"We want to design a system between the United States, Russia and Europe, with everyone participating as equal partners," Johndroe said on the margins of a rich nation summit at Toyako in northern Japan.

"It's truly a landmark agreement," Rice said after signing the accord with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. "It is an agreement that is befitting for friends and allies who face a common threat in the 21st century."

During her talks in Prague, Rice charged that Iran's work to build longer-range missiles was proceeding "apace" while at the same time it was defying international calls to halt sensitive nuclear technology.

"Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat," the top US diplomat warned.

Rice also reiterated Washington's position that the radar station was not aimed at Russia and instead served as a "building block" for not just Czech and US security but for the "international community as a whole."

The United States wants the radar twinned with interceptor missiles in neighbouring Poland, although negotiations with Warsaw have becomed bogged down with Polish demands for additional security guarantees.

Rice said she thought it made no sense to visit Poland during her current tour of Europe because gaps remained in the negotiations.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had already clashed with US President George W. Bush over missile defence at their first face-to- face meeting, during the G8 summit in Japan on Monday.

Analysts say the Russians fear not only a potential long-term threat to their own nuclear deterrent and the security of their airspace but also associate the shield with NATO's enlargement to include Ukraine and Georgia.

NATO endorsed the US missile defense plan at its April summit in Bucharest.
The US has in the past suggested that Russian inspectors could visit the anti-missile sites, as long as Prague and Warsaw agreed.

"We want the system to be transparent to the Russians," Rice insisted Tuesday.
Protestors from Greenpeace, who fear the missile shield will trigger a new arms race, unrolled a massive image of a target on one of the hills overlooking Prague ahead of Rice's arrival.

Opinion polls regularly show around two-thirds of Czech opposed to hosting the US radar.

Around 2,000 demonstrators gathered in Prague's central Wenceslas Square, with banners proclaiming "No to the Radar" and "Resign."

But Schwarzenberg expected the deal to be ratified by parliament.

"There are sufficient lawmakers who are sufficiently aware of their responsibility and will go forward in strength during the voting," he told reporters.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said the deal reflected a "joint desire to protect the free world."

Prague was the first leg of a three-country tour that will take Rice to Bulgaria and Georgia where she will renew US support for Tbilisi's bid for NATO membership - another bone of contention with Moscow.

Truthout link
http://www.truthout.org/article/us-draws-russian-fire-signing-missile-defence-deal

Post Traumatic Stress Soars in US Troops

By: David Morgan, Reuters
May 27th, 2008

Washington - Newly diagnosed cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan surged 46.4 percent in 2007, bringing the five-year total to nearly 40,000, according to U.S. military data released on Tuesday.

The statistics, released by the Army, showed the number of new PTSD cases formally diagnosed at U.S. military facilities climbed to 13,981 last year from 9,549 in 2006.

The numbers rose as President George W. Bush poured extra forces into Iraq to try to quell sectarian violence and extended Army tours from 12 to 15 months. The United States has also sent more forces to Afghanistan.

The figures, encompassing all four branches of the U.S. armed services, showed that the Army alone had 10,049 new PTSD cases last year.
This brings to 39,366 the number of PTSD cases diagnosed at military facilities between January 1, 2003, and December 31, 2007, among troops deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The totals include 28,365 cases for the Army, 5,641 for the Marines, 2,884 for the Navy and 2,476 for the Air Force.

Army officials said the larger number of PTSD diagnoses in recent years partly reflects greater awareness and tracking of the disorder by the U.S. military.

Longer, Multiple Combat Tours

"But we're also exposing more people to combat," Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general, told reporters.
Experts also say PTSD symptoms increase as soldiers return to combat for multiple tours of duty.

PTSD is a health condition that can result from wartime trauma such as being physically wounded or seeing others hurt or killed.
Symptoms range from irritability and outbursts of anger to sleep difficulties, trouble concentrating, extreme vigilance and an exaggerated startle response. People with the condition can persistently relive the traumatic events that initially induced horror or helplessness.

The Pentagon has come under mounting political pressure in recent years to enhance treatment for PTSD amid criticism that initial programs were inadequate.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a change in the U.S. government clearance process that allows PTSD sufferers to seek help for combat-related mental health problems without risking their military careers.

Army officials on Tuesday emphasized that the data do not reflect the actual number of troops and war veterans who suffer from PTSD, many of whom do not seek treatment or have been diagnosed at civilian facilities where records are confidential.

A recent study by the RAND Corp. estimated about 300,000 troops, or 18.5 percent, of the more than 1.5 million troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan exhibit symptoms of either PTSD or depression.

The fresh statistics add detail about the scale of human suffering from two wars that have killed 4,579 U.S. troops and inflicted physical wounds on 32,076 more.
There currently are 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan.
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