Russia Shuns Report It Will Annex Province

Putin Defends War With Georgia; Says Russia Will Not Encroach On South Ossetia's Sovereignty

(CBS/AP)  Prime Minister Vladimir Putin harshly defended the Russian war in Georgia and insisted that Russia was not trying to annex former Soviet republics.

Putin's remarks were made to foreign policy experts during a meeting in Sochi.

He said Russia had to invade Georgia after Georgia attacked South Ossetia's main city on Aug. 7.

If Russia had not invaded, Putin said, it would have been like Russia "getting a bloody nose and hanging its head down."

Putin also said Thursday that Russia has, "no wish or grounds to encroach on the sovereignty of former Soviet republics."

Prior to Putin's comments, Russia's foreign minister said South Ossetia does not want to become part of Russia.

Sergey Lavrov's statement Thursday followed a series of reports of contradictory statements by South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity.

Kokoity was quoted by news agencies as telling a group of foreign policy experts that South Ossetia would join Russia.

But he later retracted those comments in a subsequent interview with Interfax.

Lavrov later said during a visit to Warsaw that "South Ossetia doesn't wish to join up with anyone."

Russia and Georgia fought a short war last month and Russian annexation of Ossetia would infuriate the Georgians.

It would also give the impression that Russia had been seeking to absorb South Ossetia all along.

On Wednesday, shots fired near a Russian checkpoint outside South Ossetia killed a Georgian police officer, and police accused Russian forces of hindering their investigation.

The shooting on the tense line where Georgian authority ends underscored the threat of violence in the area, even as Russia begins to withdraw forces still deep in Georgia a month after a war.

In another show of defiance toward the United States, which has backed Georgia, Russia announced that two Russian strategic Tu-160 bombers landed in Venezuela on a training mission Wednesday.

Russia's Defense Ministry said in a statement that the planes will conduct training flights over neutral waters for a few days before heading back to Russia.

Russia had been angered that U.S. warships brought humanitarian aid to Georgia via the Black Sea, which Russia considers its sphere of influence. The flights appeared to be a direct challenge to the United States in its own hemisphere.

Automatic weapons fire "from the direction" of the Russian roadblock at Karaleti, on a main road leading to South Ossetia, hit the policeman at a Georgian checkpoint half a mile away, Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said.

The Georgians did not return fire and the policeman later died at a hospital, he said.

At the headquarters of Russian forces in South Ossetia, a Russian official insisted that Russian troops did not fire the shots. The official said he was not authorized to give his name.

Georgian police official Vladimir Dzhukeli said the Russians had refused to let Georgian investigators pass through the Karaleti checkpoint to see where the gunfire might have come from.

Georgian media speculated that Russia's South Ossetian allies might have been the source of the gunfire, but a South Ossetia government spokeswoman insisted that was not the case.

Associated Press reporters have seen armed South Ossetians looting Georgian homes in the area since the war in early August, and ethnic Georgian refugees have accused some Ossetians of killings and beatings there.

Georgian authorities say about 2,000 Russian troops are posted at 24 positions ringing South Ossetia and Abkhazia and elsewhere in Georgia, a humiliating occupation.

On Wednesday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili visited Gori, a central city near Karaleti that was targeted by Russian jets and tanks during the war. He reiterated his vow to restore control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"We will do everything to restore Georgia's territorial integrity," Saakashvili told several dozen people outside a bombed-out apartment building that is being repaired. "That is our main task."

It's one that appears increasingly out of reach.

Under a deal reached by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, Russia pledged to withdraw its forces from all positions outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia within a month, after unarmed European Union observers are deployed.

But Russia said Tuesday it would keep 7,600 troops in the breakaway regions themselves for the foreseeable future, tightening its grip there.

[samsel3]

The truth is, this is all about control of oil & gas pipelines. The BTC oil pipeline in South Ossetia & the Nabucco natural gas pipeline in NW Georgia supply markets in the European Union. In November 2003 the World Bank funded the BTC pipeline to circumvent Russian pipelines supplying europe.

Shareholders in the BTC pipeline are: British Petroleum, AzBTC, Chevron, Statoil, TPAO, ENI, Total, Itochu, INPEX, ConocoPhillips & Amerada Hess.

Russia is the second largest supplier of oil & gas on the planet.
After loosing Iraqi oil to Operation Iraqi Freedom, they negotiated supplies with Iran. The Russians were not happy with Cheneys BTC pipeline or the TAPI Caspian Sea Pipelines project going through Afghanistan. This threatens their economy based on oil & gas.

Again it s the Bush administrations lust for money in World markets for their BIG OIL buddies

[samsel3]

More than a year and half before 911 the CIA Special Activities Division was conducting operations in Afghanistan, trying to topple the Taliban regime for the TAPI Caspian Sea Oil & Gas Pipelines...........We now call such activities terror.



February 12, 1998 John J. Maresca vp of UNOCAL oil appeared before a House sub committee. The purpose of the meeting was to gain support for exploitation of oil & natural gas resources, for the rights purchased by BIG OIL in the Caspian Sea area.

In his testimony he stated, "The key question is how the energy resources of Central Asia can be made available to nearby Asian markets ". The exploitation option stated : "One obvious route south would cross Iran, but this is foreclosed by American companies because of U.S. sanctions (with Iran ) . The only other possible route is across Afghanistan, which of course has it s own unique challenges. " He continued saying, " the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments,lenders (world monitary fund & world bank ) ,and our company "......"

UNOCAL and other American companies are prepared to undertake the job ". A consortium of oil & gas companies have taken over where UNOCAL left off.

[gaye5]

Cultural Marxism makes powerful use of tools like radio, film and later television to psychologically condition the public. It is no accident that the entertainment industry is now cultural Marxism''s most powerful weapon. That is how psychological conditioning works; people absorb the lessons the cultural Marxists want them to learn without even knowing they are being taught.
The theory was to criticize every traditional institution, starting with family.
What that means, in plain English, is that all the old sins become virtues, and all the old virtues become sins. Homosexuality is a fine and good thing, but anyone who thinks men and women should have different social roles is an evil "fascist". That is what political correctness now teaches children in public schools all across America.
They further took one of political correctness''s favorite words, "tolerance", and gave it a new meaning.
They defined "liberating tolerance" as tolerance for all ideas and movements coming from the left, and intolerance for all ideas and movements coming from the right.
The generation which runs every elite institution in America, leaders of unions, education and government, now wages a ceaseless war on all traditional beliefs and institutions.

[gaye5]

I have thought that Russia would eventually try to take back the countries which were under its communist command... As Gorbachev said many years ago, "Communism has not finished as some in the west would say, all we have done is changed our tactics". And they have, thus they have won in all the world...
What happened, in short, is that America''s traditional culture, which had grown up over generations from our Western European, Judeo-Christian roots, was swept aside by an ideology. We know that ideology best as "political correctness" or "multi-culturalism". It really is cultural Marxism. Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms goes back to World War I. Cultural Marxism has become the ruling ideology of America''s elites.
The No. 1 goal of that cultural Marxism, since its creation, has been the destruction of Western European culture and the Christian religion.
Communism would use a "long march through the institutions" -- the schools, the media, even the churches, every institution that could influence the culture.
They realized that psychological conditioning offered them a far more powerful tool than just philosophy. Today, when Hollywood''s cultural Marxists want to "normalize" something like homosexuality (thus "liberating" us from "repression"), they put on television show after television show where the only normal-seeming white male is a homosexual.

[samsel3]

The truth is, this is all about control of oil & gas pipelines. The BTC oil pipeline in South Ossetia & the Nabucco natural gas pipeline in NW Georgia supply markets in the European Union. In November 2003 the World Bank funded the BTC pipeline to circumvent Russian pipelines supplying europe.

Shareholders in the BTC pipeline are: British Petroleum, AzBTC, Chevron, Statoil, TPAO, ENI, Total, Itochu, INPEX, ConocoPhillips & Amerada Hess.

Russia is the second largest supplier of oil & gas on the planet.
After loosing Iraqi oil to Operation Iraqi Freedom, they negotiated supplies with Iran. The Russians were not happy with Cheneys BTC pipeline or the TAPI Caspian Sea Pipelines project going through Afghanistan. This threatens their economy based on oil & gas.

Again it s the Bush administrations lust for money in World markets for their BIG OIL buddies

[Syndicate]

We need a war against foriegn oil. If we don''t fight and win it then we will either be a slave country to Russia and its control of oil or we will have to fight Russia in ww3 for oil. I don''t think we can win. We may have the best every thing but we don''t have the fuel to power it.

[hacker10100]

WW3.....

[gce65]

"We will do everything to restore Georgia''s territorial integrity," Saakashvili told several dozen people outside a bombed-out apartment building that he and US Vice President D!ck Cheney talked about building into an exclusive bird-hunting lodge. "That is our main task."

[gce65]

South Ossetia and Abkhazia don''t want to be part of Georgia. Both fought wars with Georgia in 92/93 just to gain autonomy from it. That was only a year after Georgia seceded from Russia. And there are plenty of other autonomous regions in Georgia. Any guesses why they all want autonomy?

Just hold UN-observed elections in both regions and let the people decide for themselves; that would be democracy. But the US and Georgia would never let that happen because they know South Ossetia and Abkhazia would vote to secede!

[presjfk]

If only our leaders would realize the best way to combat our enemies; Russia, Iran, Venezuela and others would be to end our dependence on foreign oil. We should have another war, far reaching affecting all Americans, costing more than we have ever spent before on the military, this war to end our dependence on foreign oil. We should mobilize the entire country until this war has been won.