Russia pulls forces from port city (click here)
13 hours ago
A Georgian official said Russian forces have left the Black Sea port city of Poti.
Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili says Russian troops have withdrawn completely from the two posts they maintained on the outskirts of Poti.
Russia has maintained two dozen posts in Georgia beyond separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia following last month's war over South Ossetia.
The presence in Poti has been particularly galling for Georgia because it is hundreds of miles from where most of the fighting occurred.
Russia promised last week to withdraw from Poti by this coming Monday.
Russia is to withdraw all its forces from Georgian territory outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia next month.
...."The Russians were right; we're wrong," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said this week at a hearing of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
"The Georgians started it; the Russians ended it," he said.
Rohrabacher claimed that unidentified intelligence sources had assured him that Georgia started the fighting that began Aug. 7 when Georgia's military tried to re-establish control over its breakaway, pro-Russian province of South Ossetia....
EU accused of Georgia duplicity (click here)
Russia has accused the EU of signing a deal with Georgia on the deployment of ceasefire monitors that contradicts one agreed hours earlier with Moscow.
Russia's foreign minister said it would not permit EU monitors in South Ossetia or Abkhazia but that the deal signed by the EU with Georgia allowed this.
Georgia's breakaway regions have been recognised as independent by Russia.
The EU said it was not discussed with Moscow whether the observers could go into the separatist breakaway regions....
Medvedev describes Georgia attack as Russia's 9/11 (click here)
· President says US backed assault on South Ossetia · Nato membership 'would destabilise region'
Georgia's attack on the breakaway region of South Ossetia was unnecessary and unprovoked and was encouraged by the United States, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, said in an interview yesterday.
"For Russia, August 8 was like September 11 for the United States," he told a group of foreign journalists and academics. "I would like to see major lessons from it for the world."
He made clear that the lessons, as Russia sees them, are that the post-cold war "illusion" that a world with one super power is a safe and predictable place is now over.
The 42-year-old president said George Bush had phoned him shortly after he had ordered Russian forces to drive the Georgians back. "'You're a young president with a liberal background. Why do you need this?' Medvedev quoted Bush as saying. "I told him we had no choice," he said.
The Russian president's interview followed a day after a similar interview with the prime minister, Vladimir Putin. He seemed to be talking from the same script, though there were important differences between the two. The president was more blunt about his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, calling him "burdened with a host of pathologies" and alleging he often appeared in public under the influence of drugs.
"Russia had to recognise South Ossetia as an independent state - a move widely criticised in the west - because otherwise Georgia might attack again....
