Georgia: the EU’s in the dark
Long before this year’s Georgian war, I chatted to a European foreign policy expert recently returned from the Caucasian flash-point. He was shocked to discover that UN peacekeepers there did not patrol at night (similar limitations beset the UN in Congo, a problem during the ongoing crisis there). Now that the EU has its own monitors in-country, are they any better after dark? Maybe not…
EU cease-fire monitors in Georgia claimed a small victory when Russian forces pulled back from a disputed village near breakaway South Ossetia, but witnesses have said they returned with nightfall.
Georgia has condemned the Russian presence in Perevi as a violation of the cease-fire brokered after their five-day war in August, when Russia intervened in its ex-Soviet neighbor to halt a Georgian military assault on pro-Russian South Ossetia.
News of the troops’ departure eased fears of confrontation in the area, where some of the 1,100 villagers had packed up and left. European Union monitors said the pullback came at their insistence and followed discussions with the Russian Foreign Ministry and military.
But by nightfall, a regional police source said around 20 Russian soldiers with a single armored vehicle had returned to a checkpoint in Perevi. A police spokesman confirmed the account. An EU spokeswoman said a patrol would check the village in the morning.
