Saakashvili: Russia Wants to Impose "Munich-Type of Deal" on Georgia

President Saakashvili said Russia was blackmailing Georgia through military and diplomatic maneuvering to force it accept “a Munich-type of deal” – a reference to the 1938 treaty that allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

In a statement made for a group of foreign journalists on August 14, Saakashvili said the deal would mean Georgia abandoning its drive to restore territorial integrity and amount to legalizing Russian troops’ presence on the Georgian soil. He did not give further details.

Saakashvili said “one-third of Georgia’s territory” was under the Russian occupation and the Russian tanks were rolling back and forth trying to mount pressure on the Georgian authorities.
Despite the August 13 agreement between the Russian military commander on the ground and the Georgian officials, town of Gori remained under the Russian forces’ control and the Georgian security and police forces were standing outside the town all day long waiting for the town hand over. But there were no signs of Russians retreating.

“We are planning it [withdrawal as part of the ceasefire deal],” Anatoly Nogovitsin, Russia's deputy chief of staff, told reporters in Moscow on August 14. “It depends on many factors. I can't give you the date. We have stopped building up troops.”

Also on August 14 Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev med with secessionist leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Sergey Bagapsh and Eduard Kokoity, respectively, in Moscow. The two secessionist leaders signed a six-point agreement.

Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said “Presidents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia” had already subscribed to the, as he called it, “Medvedev-Sarkozy plan” and “the only missing thing is the Georgian side.”

And Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said it bluntly that he thought there was no way that those two regions would accept to be part of Georgia after what had happened.

Meanwhile in the United States, Secretary of Defense Gates called a special news conference jointly with Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright on the situation in Georgia and then President Bush reiterated his support for Georgia’s territorial integrity after he was briefed on situation in Georgia by CIA chief.

The Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is expected to arrive in Tbilisi on August 15, after travailing to France.

“The head of state [President Sarkozy] and Mrs. Rice both deemed that the six-point agreement protocol approved by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on August 12 must be signed without delay by the parties,” the French EU presidency said in a statement after meeting between Rice and Sarkozy.