US orchestrated conflict in South Ossetia, Putin says
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of instigating the fighting in Georgia and said he suspects a connection to the US presidential campaign - a contention the White House dismissed as "patently false".
In a decision he said was unrelated to unraveling Russia-US ties, Putin also ordered that 19 American poultry producers be barred from selling their products to Russia. He said the unnamed companies ignored demands that they correct alleged deficiencies.
Putin, the former president and architect of an assertive foreign policy, suggested in an interview with CNN that there was an American presence amid the combat with a potential domestic US political motive.
"We have serious grounds to think that there were US citizens right in the combat zone" during Russia's war with the US-allied ex-Soviet republic, he said in the interview broadcast on state-run Russian television. "And if that's so, if that is confirmed, it's very bad. It's very dangerous."
Putin said that Russia had hoped the US would restrain Georgia, which Moscow accuses of starting the war by attacking South Ossetia on Aug 7. Instead, he suggested the US encouraged the nation's leadership to try to rein in the breakaway region by force.
"The American side in fact armed and trained the Georgian army," Putin said. "Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in interethnic conflicts? It's easier to arm one side and push it into the murder of the other side, and it's over.
"It seems like an easy solution. In reality it turns out that it's not always so," he said.
The US has close ties with the Georgian government and has trained Georgian units. The Pentagon has said that the US had about 130 trainers in Georgia when the fighting erupted earlier this month.
In an interview with France 24 to be aired on Friday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said there were no American "commanders or even advisers" in the conflict zone. He said the conflict had nothing to do with the US, but "the aggression of the Russians".
Putin appeared to link claims of an American presence amid the combat with a potential domestic US political motive.
"If my guesses are confirmed, then that raises the suspicion that somebody in the United States purposefully created this conflict with the aim of aggravating the situation and creating an advantage ... for one of the candidates in the battle for the post of US president."
Putin did not name a party, a candidate or provide evidence to back his claims. But some pro-Kremlin Russian politicians have argued that US Republicans hoped the Georgia fighting would stir support for their presidential candidate John McCain, a strong Kremlin critic who has tried to make security issues a strong suit.
Agencies
(China Daily 08/30/2008 page11)
