Turkish Forum

Category: Eastern Europe

  • No Caucasian Ceasefire until Russia Achieves its Aims

    No Caucasian Ceasefire until Russia Achieves its Aims

     

    DEBKAfile Special Report and Analysis

    August 11, 2008

    Prime minister Vladimir Putin toys defiant Georgia

    By Monday, Aug. 11, the fourth day of the Caucasian conflict, which first erupted over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, the pro-American Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili sounded hopeless in the face of overwhelming Russian might.

    International condemnation of Russian behavior as “unacceptable and disproportionate” did not ease his country’s plight or stop the continuing violence.

    Saakashvili’s third commitment to a ceasefire, signed in the presence of the French and Finnish foreign ministers, was brusquely rejected by the Kremlin before the would-be mediators had a chance to present it later that day. The Russian NATO ambassador said his government would not deal with the “war criminal” Georgian president, confirming Saakashvili’s charge that one of Moscow’s objects was to oust him as president.

    DEBKAfile’s military analysts reported Sunday, Aug. 10:

    Russian president Dimitry Medvedev said Sunday, Aug. 10, the war would go on until Tbilisi withdrew its forces unconditionally from South Ossetia and pledged never to attack the region again. This would mean Georgia’s acceptance of its truncation and its surrender to Russian hegemony.

    The gap between the claims of both sides attested to the war of words accompanying the battles on the ground. While the Georgians claimed to have killed “several hundred” Russian troops and downed “80 planes,” Moscow admitted to the loss of 18 soldiers and four warplanes.

    Civilians, especially in South Ossetia and at least three Georgian towns pummeled by Russian jets, are bearing the brunt of this conflict. Saturday and Sunday, they pounded Gori, the Black Sea naval, military and oil port of Poti, and Zugdidi on the Abkhazian border.

    The Red Cross reports that the conflict has displaced at least 40,000 people from their homes. The South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, now a ghost town, is controlled by Russian forces.

    That the Georgian town of Gori was pounded from the air for three days is attested to by witnesses. The numbers of the city’s dead and displaced certainly run into hundreds.

    DEBKAfile reports that the Russians pulverized Gori to punish Georgia for invading the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali last Thursday, Aug. 7.

    Sunday night, Russian planes dropped bombs near Tbilisi’s international airport and a nearby military air installation shortly after the US began flying hundreds of Georgian troops home from Iraq. The intention appeared to be to leave the Georgian reinforcements nowhere to land.

    During the day, too, the Russian navy imposed a sea blockade on Georgian’s Black Sea ports and later claimed to have sunk a Georgian vessel during an attack.

    In the face of President George W. Bush’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and support for international mediation, Moscow poured an additional 10,000 men and armor into South Ossetia Sunday as well.

    DEBKAfile’s military analysts: By flouting US demands to accept mediation, Moscow highlighted America’s lack of leverage for helping its embattled Georgian ally.

    The Bush administration finds itself trapped in its foreign policy commitment to dialogue and international diplomacy for solving world disputes, but short of willing opposite numbers.

    Russia is following Iran’s example in exploiting Washington’s inhibition to advance its goals by force. Therefore, the Caucasian standoff has profound ramifications for the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Moscow’s disdain for Washington’s lack of muscle will further encourage Tehran and its terrorist proxies to defy the international community and the United States in particular.

    DEBKAfile’s military analysts reported Saturday, Aug. 9:

    Tiny Georgia with an army of less than 18,000, having been roundly defeated in South Ossetia, cannot hope to withstand the mighty Russian army in Abkhazia.

    Therefore, President Saakashvili, whose bid to join NATO and the European Union infuriated Moscow, will have to write off both breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as lost to Russia.

    This is Moscow’s payback for the US-NATO action to detach Kosovo from Serbia and launch it on the way to independence. It is also a warning to former Soviet bloc nations, Ukraine, the Caucasian and Central Asian peoples against opting to join up with the United States and the NATO bloc in areas which Moscow deems part of its strategic sphere of influence

    After severing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, four follow-up Russian steps may be postulated:

    1. The two separatist provinces will proclaim their independence, just like Kosovo.

    2. Russia will continue to exercise its overwhelming military and air might to reduce the pro-American Saakashvili to capitulation.

    3. The Georgian president will not be able to face his own nation after losing two regions of his country and causing its humiliation. Moscow will then make Washington swallow a pro-Russian successor.

    4. Moscow’s trampling of Georgia will serve as an object lesson for Russia’s own secessionist provinces, such as Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, and a warning not to risk defying Russian armed might.

    4. Western plans to develop more oil and gas pipelines to bypass the Russian network to the West, in addition to the Caspian line which carries one million barrels a day from Baku through Georgia to Turkey and out to the West, will be held in abeyance pending an accommodation with the rulers of the Kremlin.

  • Russia, China, Germany reject US evidence of Iran’s covert nuke program

    Russia, China, Germany reject US evidence of Iran’s covert nuke program

     

    DEBKAfile Special Analysis

    September 20, 2008, 1:30 PM (GMT+02:00)

     

    Euphrates pipes for destroyed Syrian reactor designed to be part of Iran’s military program

    Russia, China and Germany refuse to countenance tougher sanctions against Iran notwithstanding the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report from Vienna that its inspections of suspect activities and covert projects were stalled by Tehran’s non-cooperation. Diplomats for the five permanent Security Council members and Germany, meeting at the State Department Friday, Sept 19, therefore failed to agree on a new round of sanctions ahead of their foreign ministers’ meeting at UN Center next week.

    The meeting avoided discussing the timing and content of a fourth round of sanctions, only broadly calling on Iran – for the umpteenth time after numerous rejections – to accept the incentives on offer for halting uranium enrichment and cooperating with UN inspections.

    The nuclear watchdog reported that Tehran had stalled its efforts to establish whether or not Iran was developing nuclear warheads, enriching uranium for military purposes, testing nuclear explosives or building nuclear-capable missiles.

    Tuesday, Sept 16, the UN watchdog gave a closed meeting of the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency photos and documents proving Iran had tried to refit a long-distance Shehab missile to carry a nuclear payload. The also produced calculations and diagrams from Iranian missile and nuclear experts’ computers on nuclear detonations and how to build nuclear-capable missiles.

    The next day, Wednesday, CIA chief Michael Hayden disclosed that the destruction of the Syrian reactor – as a result of intelligence collaboration with a “foreign partner” who first identified the facility’s purpose – spoiled a project “that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons.”

    He did not name the foreign partner, but the reference to Israel was obvious. He also said the reactor was similar to the North Korean model.

    “We were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons,” Hayden said, adding: “When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor.”

    The Bush administration released all this data in order to back up the IAEA report and tell the international community that the US and Israel were furnished with more intelligence confirming Iran’s covert nuclear projects and the clandestine partnershipn between Tehran, Damascus and Pyongyang. North Korea was also made aware that Washington had not missed its preparations for re-activating its nuclear reactor.

    Nuclear watchdog officials asked Tehran to explain why its experts were busy making calculations for military projects, claimed to be non-existent. No answer has been forthcoming as yet. The Iranian representative only said the materials had been forged by certain parties as a provocation.

    Nonetheless, Russian, Chinese and German diplomats attending the IAEA board meeting last Tuesday insisted that the evidence they saw did not prove Iran was engaged in developing nuclear weapons.

    Despite the fact that leading world powers have tied themselves in knots to avoid keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands, Israel’s prime minister Shimon Peres plans to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly next week announcing that Israel is against resorting to military action against Iran and relies on sanctions.

    DEBKAfile’s political circles stress that the Israeli government has never confirmed the position embodied in his address.

    Ahead of his address to the General Assembly, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, grandstanding as always, challenged the American presidential candidates to a public debate “over global issues, in the presence of the media at the UN. He also said that while “some say the idea of Greater Israel has expired, I say the idea of lesser Israel has expired, too.”

  • 10 Russian warships deployed in Syria

    10 Russian warships deployed in Syria

    Ten Russian warships have been deployed at the Syrian port of Tartus based on an accord reached by the two sides after the August south Caucases conflict.

    Rear Admiral Andrei Baranov, head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s operations directorate, said Friday the Russian engineering crew was at Tartus to expand the capacity of the harbor to host additional fleet vessels.

    The teams will also be working on expanding Latakia, another Syrian port, possibly for aircraft carriers or guided missile cruisers, said Baranov.

    On Sept. 12, nearly one month after the south Caucases conflict broke out, Russia and Syria reached an agreement that would provide Moscow with a long-term base rights at Syrian ports.

    Military sources reported that Israeli military leaders were stunned at the news of the Russian fleet being deployed near Israeli shores.

    Source: www.daily.pk, 20 September 2008

  • Russians moving into Syria

    Russians moving into Syria

    Strategic alliance include fleet, missiles

    Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND.

    The coast of Syria, where Tartus is located

    Just as Russia has reasserted its power in the Black Sea, it now plans to make waves in the Mediterranean Sea by establishing a major base in Syria, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

    This decision not only will allow a permanent presence of Russia’s nuclear-armed Black Sea fleet in the Mediterranean, but it also offers the potential for future confrontations between Russia and Israel, as well as with the United States.

    The Russian navy has begun to upgrade facilities in Tartus, Syria, and already has backed this up by moving to Syria a flotilla of its powerful warships led by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. The flotilla includes the Russian navy’s biggest missile cruiser Moskva and some four nuclear missile submarines.

    From 1971 to 1992, the former Soviet Union operated a naval maintenance facility at Tartus. It then fell into disrepair. Only one of its three floating piers remained operational.

    But the facilities now are being restored.

    “It is much more advantageous to have such a facility than to return ships that patrol the Mediterranean to their home bases,” said former Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Eduard Baltin.

    The establishment of the permanent base also is viewed as Moscow’s response to the upcoming installation of U.S. missile interceptors along Poland’s Baltic coast at Redzikowo. Such an agreement was signed last month between the U.S. and Poland.

    Syria, meantime, also is considering a request from Moscow to base missiles in the country due to tensions between Russia and the West over its invasion of Georgia in the Caucasus.

    Russia would send in the surface-to-surface Iskander missile which Moscow says is capable of penetrating any missile defense system.

    With a NATO code name of the SS-26 Stone, the Iskander is a road-mobile system. It has a range of 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, giving Damascus the capability of striking Tel Aviv in Israel.

    Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin is the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

    Source: www.worldnetdaily.com, September 19, 2008

  • Whither Turkish-Armenian relations?

    Whither Turkish-Armenian relations?

    By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul

    As symbolic gestures go, Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s attendance at an Armenia-Turkey football match in Yerevan on September 6 could not have been bettered.

    The first visit by a senior Turkish politician since Armenia became independent 17 years ago, it has sparked an upsurge of fraternal feeling on both sides of a border closed since 1993. And the signs are that there is more to come. If Armenia agrees to renounce territorial claims on eastern Turkey implicit in its founding charter, one senior Turkish diplomat says: “We could see diplomatic relations begun and rail links restarted within six months.”

    “The two sides are in agreement over a surprising number of issues,” agrees Richard Giragosian, a Yerevan-based analyst, describing Armenia’s invitation of Gul as “a vital foreign policy victory” for the Caucasian state’s embattled government. Armenia stands to benefit enormously from the rapprochement. With its Azeri and Turkish borders closed, Georgia has been its only window on the West. When Russia wrecked Georgian infrastructure in August, it was Armenians, not Georgians, who suffered from food shortages.

    It is no coincidence either that the two Turkish provinces bordering Armenia are the country’s poorest. For years, politicians in Kars and Igdir have been calling for the border to be opened. Trade between the two countries “would slow rapid population movement away from eastern Turkey,” says former Turkish ambassador to Russia, Volkan Vural. “It would provide Central Asia-bound exporters with a good new route. Plus energy security would be improved if Armenia joins current energy projects.”

    Though Turkey has increasingly used its key position on the “East-West” corridor connecting Europe to the Caspian as a card in its stumbling EU negotiations, such optimism seems premature, for three reasons.

    Reasons not to be cheerful

    First, it ignores the fact that Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan has been closed since the 1988-1994 armed conflict that took place in the small ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the predominantly ethnic Armenians and Azeri forces. Azerbaijan showed considerable statesmanship in backing the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. But there is no sign of progress on Nagorno-Karabakh. Instead, enriched with oil and gas money, Baku now spends $1bn annually on military rearmament. Belligerent rhetoric about re-taking lost territories is, if anything, on the up.

    Second, and much more importantly, Turkey’s talk of a new Caucasian pact appears to ignore the key lesson of August’s conflict in South Ossetia; in today’s Caucasus, Russia is boss. The August bust-up “was clearly not about Ossetia, only a little about Georgia, only a little about Nato, and a huge amount about geopolitics,” says David Smith, director of the Georgian Security Analysis Center in Tbilisi. “It was a shot fired at the East-West corridor, a warning to BP, ExxonMobil, anybody hoping to loosen Gazprom’s hold on Central Asia.”

    With Russian bombs falling within 200 metres of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, Georgia’s neighbours seem to have got the message. Azerbaijan recently upped oil exports via Russian pipelines when BTC flow was interrupted by a Turkish Kurdish separatist sabotage attack on the pipeline on August 6. And when US Vice-President Dick Cheney visited Baku on September 3 to drum up local support for a trans-Caspian gas line, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev turned him down.

    With the future of Nabucco, a hugely expensive EU-backed gas pipeline due to bring Caspian gas direct to Europe by 2013, looking increasingly doubtful, some analysts hint at the possibility of rerouting the East-West corridor through Armenia. But this talk of Armenia offering new energy security possibilities misses another point: Georgia earned its position on the East-West corridor thanks to its staunch pro-American stance; Armenia, meanwhile, to cite Richard Giragosian, is little better than “a Russian garrison state.”

    Visitors to Yerevan have their passports stamped by Russian border guards. Armenia’s energy and telecommunication sectors have been in Russian hands since 2005 and 2006 respectively. Russian Railways bought Armenian railways this January. In that context, Giragosian argues, opening the Turkish-Armenian border risks abetting Russian efforts to sideline Georgia. “The key question Turkey needs to ask itself over Armenia,” he says, “is do we have a partner on the other side.”

  • EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey

    EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey

    HELSINKI, Finland: The Georgian crisis has strengthened the strategic importance of Turkey both in the Caucasus and for the European Union, the bloc’s enlargement chief said Friday.

    EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Turkey was “engaged in very active and evidently successful diplomacy” in its neighboring regions.

    Turkey has met separately with Georgian and Russian officials in an effort to promote peace between the two countries since their war in August.

    It is also helping to normalize ties between Syria and the EU and is mediating talks between Israel and the Palestinians in Istanbul.

    “Turkey remains a very important bridge between Europe and the Islamic world,” Rehn told reporters during a visit to Helsinki. “In other words, everything that has happened in recent weeks has only strengthened Turkey’s strategic importance from the EU’s point of view.”

    EU: Georgia crisis fortifies importance of Turkey – International Herald Tribune.