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Japan allocates over half a million dollars for landmine removal
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Author: Story by Liene Veide
The Japanese government and the Halo Trust, a nongovernmental organization in Georgia, signed a contract on Jan. 22 to clear landmine fields in the Georgian districts of Mtskheta and Sagarejo.
The grant contract was signed between the Ambassador of Japan to Georgia Masayoshi Kamohara, and Patrick Thomson, at the Halo Trust. The nongovernmental organization is in charge of the project and the Japanese government is funding it.
The project is within the framework of the Grassroots and Human Security Grant Assistance Program.
“This is not the first time for the government of Japan to cooperate with this organization in Georgia,” said Kamohara.
“In 2000, the Halo Trust successfully implemented a mine clearance project in Abkhazia.”
Japan will assist in the project by providing mine removal equipment, such as an armored excavator and an armored loader.
Thomson said the Halo Trust would like to clear all of the numerous landmine fields in Georgia.
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Death serenades of mined valleys
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Author: Story by Irakli Aladashvili, Editor-in-chief of the military analytical magazine “Arsenali”
International organizations need more professionalism and attention when carrying out mine clearance works in Georgia.
On January 22, a contract was signed at the Embassy of Japan granting Georgia $652,835 to clear Mtskheta and Sagarejo of landmines.
The works are commissioned by the Georgian Defense Ministry and will be executed by the international humanitarian organization The HALO Trust.
Mine clearance works in the Mtskheta district are scheduled to start next week and last for five months. As for Sagarejo, clearing the territory of explosive items will start in March 2010 and last for a year.
Why did it become possible to conduct mine clearance works in Mtskheta and Sagarejo districts when there have been no battles on the territories? In both cases first Soviet, then Russian military units were located in the regions.
On the left bank of the intersection of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers, right below the Jvari Monastery, a Soviet military engineering unit was located for decades and its main purpose was building pontoon bridges.
From1991-1992 the Mtskheta base area, just like territories around other Russian military units, was mined with anti-infantry landmines. Later, Russian generals explained the necessity of these measures with the fear that Georgian armed groupings would attack Russian military units and take weapons.
Further, Russian military units left the area without leaving the landmine location maps and as a consequence, several people fell victim to landmine explosions, including an officer of the Georgian military unit that settled there after the withdrawal of Russians.
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Timoshenko – Saakashvili’s Hope
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Author: Story by Zaza Jgharkava
Ukraine’s election extravaganza is over for Georgian observers. All eyes are back on Tbilisi. The desired result was achieved – the “oranges” are in the second round of the presidential election and will have to clear out final relations with Yanukovich, the Kremlin’s favorite, on February 7. Incumbent Prime Minister Timoshenko lost to the leader of the Party of Regions in the first round by 10 percent of votes.
Sending Georgian “democratic landing” to Ukraine and the problems they encountered there caused more of a stir in Tbilisi than in Ukraine. The opposition treated President Saakashvili’s attempts and his loyalty to the “oranges” with irony.
“I warned Victor Yushchenko not to baptize Mikheil Saakashvili’s little son Nikoloz, as Saakashvili baptized my child as well, and then declared me the number one enemy,” Koba Davitashvili, onetime Saakashvili supporter turned leader of the oppositional People’s Party, said.
Ukraine’s incumbent president Yushchenko keeps silent; however, considering Yushchenko’s starting data for presidential elections, he has nothing to reproach President Saakashvili for. It was proven on the first round of presidential elections. The incumbent president gathered 5.4 percent of the votes. This is why supporting the second leader of the “oranges” was quite a logical choice. Georgian oppositionists see another reason in the “new Ukrainian choice” of the Georgian government. Sozar Subari, a leader of the Alliance for Georgia, recollected the orange ties of President Saakashvili and businesses of his in Ukraine.
“People sent to Ukraine are cautious about their business. This is why Givi Targamadze went there, and not to protect votes for the ‘oranges.’ It is a shame,” Subari said.
Nothing is known about the business of Parliament’s Defense and Security Committee Chairmen in Ukraine. No such accusation was voiced by any of the oppositionists before, even in most critical situations. The timing of such accusations by the former ombudsman raises even more doubts.
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Nagorno-Karabakh discussed in Sochi
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Author: Story by Louis-Antoine Le Moulec
On Jan. 25, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev invited the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serzh Sargsian and Ilham Aliyev, to his residence in Krasnaya Polyana, next to the seaside resort of Sochi where the 2014 Olympic Games will take place.
The aim of the meeting was to continue the talks that were initiated under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group about the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia started in Feb. 1988 when Nagorno-Karabakh, mostly populated by Armenians, sought independence. In Sept. 1991 it was declared the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh and it seceded from mainland Azerbaijan, with Stepanakert for its capital.
The conflict broke out between the Azeri army and the military troops of the new republic, supported by Yerevan and the Armenian Diaspora.
The conflict lasted three years until a negotiated truce in May 1994 was reached. Azerbaijan lost Nagorno-Karabakh and seven close districts that formed the new separatist region. The pacific settlement of the conflict has been conducted since 1992 by Russia, the U.S. and France, co-presidents of Minsk Group.
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Window on Eurasia
Moscow’s new man in North Caucasus seen ready to change borders there
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Author: Story by Paul Goble
Aleksandr Khloponin, Moscow’s newly appointed head of the North Caucasus Federal District, has experience with amalgamating regions in the past and thus may be inclined to combine or otherwise change the borders among the republics of that region, according to a leading Russian analyst.
In an article posted online today, Eduard Popov, the head of the Black Sea-Caspian Center of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies in Rostov-na-Donu, notes that Khloponin, in his capacity of Krasnoyarsk governor, organized the unification of the Taymyr (Dolgano-Nenets) and Evenk autonomous districts with that kray.
And consequently, that 2005 experience, along with the new talk about amalgamation following the recent declarations of Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, suggests, Popov continues, that Moscow may be ready to change borders in the Caucasus despite what everyone concedes is the extraordinary sensitivities of the people in that region to such steps.
The possibility that the central Russian government may in fact take on that challenge is suggested by the reactions of a range of Duma deputies to Gryzlov’s proposal, reactions that were reported yesterday in a Regions.ru article perhaps significantly entitled “Size Matters.”
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