Russia and Georgia accused each other of "ethnic cleansing" as the UN Security Council met in two tense emergency sessions Friday to head off all-out war between Russia, Georgia and the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.
Burning Georgian armored vehicles are seen in Tskhinvali, in the South Ossetian breakaway region of Georgia.
Photo: AP
The last-ditch negotiations came just 12 hours apart in response to Georgian troops launching a major military offensive to regain control of separatist South Ossetia. The first meeting lasted three hours, ending at 2 a.m. Friday in New York, and the second session broke off in a stalemate Friday night.
Council members planned to pick up the negotiations and possibly meet again for a third time over the weekend.
Just hours after Russia called that first meeting and failed to win backing for its proposed council statement that Georgia and South Ossetia should "renounce the use of force," Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in a furious response.
The 15-nation council met again Friday afternoon at the request of Georgia's ambassador, Irakli Alasania, who cited in a letter the urgent need to protect the "threatened independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia."
Alasania said his nation was ready to accept an immediate cease-fire. Turning to Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Alasania demanded: "Are you ready to stop the fighter jets who are in the air? ... They're about to bomb the civilian population. What are we going to do?"
Georgia is trying to regain control of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.
Photo: Sky News
The second meeting focused on a Belgian-drafted proposal that would have had the council call for "the immediate restoration of the status quo ante before violence erupted and cessation of hostilities." Belgium holds the security council presidency this month.
Churkin and Alasania heatedly accused each other's nations of "ethnic cleansing" at the later meeting.
Churkin noted that "there are reports about ethnic cleansing in villages of South Ossetia. The population is panicking, and the number of refugees is increasing... a humanitarian catastrophe is in the offing. And here Tbilisi is using the tactic of scorched earth."
Alasania countered that "it is the Russian Federation who really was supporting and is supporting militarily the regime in Tskhinvali and Sukhumi who are the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing."
That angered Churkin, who said ethnic cleansing was a "quite clear" term for what Georgia was doing. "How else can we describe this when over this day, practically these 7,000 people who are living in these towns are being destroyed?" he said. "How can you unleash this kind of slaughter, this carnage?"
Alasania replied that it was the Russian president's "decisions to legitimize the separatists' regimes who were perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing, this is very concerning."
Intense fighting reportedly raged for a second night in South Ossetia on Saturday and Georgia's interior ministry reported air attacks on three military bases and key facilities for shipping oil to the West.
Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital was bombed by warplanes during the night and that bombs fell in the area of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
He also said two other Georgian military bases were hit and that warplanes bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.
Utiashvili said there apparently were significant casualties and damage in the attacks, but that further details would not be known until the morning.
Russia dispatched an armored column into South Ossetia on Friday after Georgia, a staunch US ally, launched a surprise offensive to crush separatists. Witnesses said hundreds of civilians were killed.
The fighting, which devastated the capital of Tskhinvali, threatened to ignite a wider war between Georgia and Russia, and escalate tensions between Moscow and Washington. Georgia said it was forced to launch the assault because of rebel attacks; the separatists alleged Georgia violated a cease-fire.
MP Lasha Zhvania, chairman of the Georgian parliament's foreign relations committee, has claimed that the Russian military invaded Georgian airspace several times and bombed Gori, a city in central Georgia.
According to Zhvania, a former ambassador to Israel, there have been "provocations" from the Russian side for "some time."
"We don't wish a war, but we have to prevent military actions that endanger our citizens," he told The Jerusalem Post. He called on the West to "use all diplomatic means to prevent a Russian occupation of Georgia."
Zhvania called the South Ossetian "government" a "non-recognized terror organization."
"We fight terror groups who make trouble and endanger our citizens on Georgian territory," he said.
The Interfax news agency cited the commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia, Marat Kulakhmetov, as saying Georgian artillery fired on Tskhinvali heavily early Saturday, but stopped around 2:30 a.m.
"I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars," said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. "It's impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged."
The fighting broke out as much of the world's attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and US President George W. Bush, were in Beijing.
The timing suggested Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may have been counting on surprise to fulfill his longtime pledge to wrest back control of South Ossetia - a key to his hold on power. The rebels seek to unite with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.
Saakashvili agreed the timing was not coincidental, but accused Russia of being the aggressor. "Most decision makers have gone for the holidays," he told CNN. "Brilliant moment to attack a small country."
The leader of South Ossetia's rebel government, Eduard Kokoity, said about 1,400 people were killed in the onslaught, the Interfax news agency reported. This toll was confirmed by Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during a press conference on Saturday. Lavrov added that the toll continued to rise.
