BP shuts oil pipeline in Georgia, supplies still get through

LONDON (AFP) — Energy giant BP announced Tuesday it had closed an oil pipeline
because of fighting in Georgia but said oil and gas supplies continued to flow from the Caspian Sea to the West by other routes.

A BP spokesman confirmed the company had shut the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline in Georgia as a precaution, but said oil was still being transported to the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi by train and through an Azeri-operated pipeline.

Russian troops roll into strategic Georgian city

OUTSIDE GORI, Georgia (AP) — Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape.

In Washington, President Bush said the United States planned a massive humanitarian effort involving American ships and aircraft, includiung a C-17 military cargo plane loaded with supplies that landed on Wednesday.

He said Russia must ensure that "all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, roads and airports," remain open to let deliveries and civilians through.

Georgian officials said Gori, a central hub on Georgia's main east-west highway, was looted and bombed by the Russians before they left later in the day and camped nearby.

Moscow denied the accusations, but it appeared to be on a technicality: a BBC reporter in Gori reported that Russians tanks were in the streets as their South Ossetian separatist allies seized Georgian cars, looted Georgian homes and then set some homes ablaze.

Oh, well that's just ducky then.



Bush steps up rhetoric against Russia

UPDATED: 11.40AM - President George W. Bush put the US more firmly than ever on Georgia's side in its conflict with Russia on Wednesday, sending humanitarian aid on American military planes to help the embattled ex-Soviet republic and displaying growing impatience with Moscow's aggression.

Six days into the fighting in the tiny, impoverished country wedged between Russia and Turkey on the Black Sea, Bush said Moscow's apparent violation of a cease-fire agreement puts its aspirations for global acceptance at risk. In brief but stern remarks from the White House, the president demanded that Russia end all military activity inside its neighbour and withdraw all troops sent in recent days into Georgian territory.

Amid some fear that Russian troops may be setting up for some type of medium-term occupation of parts of Georgia or even have intentions to press on to its capital of Tbilisi, Bush promised to "rally the free world in the defence of a free Georgia".

Yeah, right. :(




Bush Orders Military to Deliver Aid to Georgia

WASHINGTON — President Bush has directed the U.S. military to lead a humanitarian mission to Georgia where tens of thousands have been forced out of their homes following a Russian invasion last week that has been described by Georgia's president as an "ethnic cleansing."

A U.S. C-17 aircraft with humanitarian supplies already has arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and another C-17 will arrive there Thursday with additional medical and humanitarian aid, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after the president's announcement.

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden with Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush said the aid mission will be "vigorous and ongoing." He warned Russia not to interfere.

"We expect Russia to honor its commitment to let in all forms of humanitarian assistance. We expect Russia to insure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit," Bush said.

Yes, because the Russians would never do anything underhanded, slimy, and destructive.





Lavrov: US must choose between Russia and Georgia

The US must choose between the "virtual project" of Georgia and real partnership with Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday, after US President George W. Bush demanded that Russia end all military activities in the former Soviet republic and dispatched US aid to devastated Georgians.

Lavrov said Georgia's leadership was "a special project of the United States. And we understand that the United States is worried about its project."

He was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying that at some point, the United States would have to choose "either support for a virtual project, or real partnership on issues that really demand collective action," referring to US cooperation with Russia in the UN Security Council on Iran and other global hot spots.

We can't afford to choose Georgia. The prospect of war with Russia... even if this nation had the fortitude, and I don't think we do, that's a mighty grim prospect.




Russia challenges George Bush as it advances through Georgia
Russia has thrown down a gauntlet to the United States, challenging President George W Bush to "choose" between Washington's relationship with Georgia and its future ties with Moscow.

After an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "Russian incursions into Georgia from South Ossetia or from Abkhazia are contrary to international law.

"The sight of Russian tanks rolling into parts of a sovereign country on its neighbouring borders will have brought a chill down the spine of many people, rightly."

Early in the day, President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia berated his country's western allies for lack of assistance in the conflict.

But following Mr Bush's offer of humanitarian aid, he claimed that Georgia's ports and airports would be placed under US military protection, a suggestion quickly denied by the Pentagon.

Russian forces on Wednesday entered the main port at Poti and detonated explosives on three Georgian patrol vessels.

Looting reignites Russia-Georgia tensions

The body of a man, his mouth caked with blood, lay in a street in the village of Dzardzanis and nearby the body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned minivan, an AFP journalist reported.

Human Rights Watch said its researchers in South Ossetia had "witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians."

Russian tanks have blocked the main highway connecting the rebel region of South Ossetia with the rest of Georgia, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.

About 100 Georgian special forces, recently returned from Iraq, set up a road block with rocket launchers and other weapons on the main highway from Gori to Tbilisi, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) away.

***

So. What happens after Georgia is sqaushed?



Russia May Focus on Pro-U.S. Ukraine After Georgia

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Now that Russia has humiliated Georgia with a punishing military offensive, it may shift its attention to reining in pro-Western Ukraine, another American ally in the former Soviet Union.

Moving to counter any threat, Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko today restricted the movement of Russia's Black Sea fleet, based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, citing national security. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow denounced the decision as a "serious, new anti-Russian step.''

Ukraine imposes restrictions on Russian navy
Ukraine imposed new restrictions on Russian naval vessels based at Sevastopol on the Black Sea as former Soviet bloc states lined up to show support for Georgia in its fight with Russia.

President Victor Yushchenko raised the prospect of revoking an agreement that allows Russia to use the Crimean port until 2017 if Russian commanders defy the new restrictions. The presidential decree requires vessels blockading Georgia to ask Kiev's permission to return to the treaty port.

Reasserting control over its near neighbours is at the heart of Russia's foreign policy. It has ruthlessly cut winter energy supplies to secure compliance from Eastern Europe and used Russian-speaking minorities from the Baltics to Central Asia as leverage against states courting the West.

Mr Yushchenko joined the leaders of Poland and the Baltic states on a solidarity mission by a self-described group of "captive nations" of the USSR, to Tbilisi on Tuesday.

Russia ‘sticks foot in door’ of Arctic riches
August 3, 2008

Russia has begun a push to claim a vast chunk of disputed Arctic territory in an aggressive campaign to win control of the region's oil and gas resources.

A state-sponsored expedition, led by a Moscow geographical institute, is in the region gathering scientific data in an attempt to prove that vast swathes of the seabed belong to Russia.

In a heavily symbolic gesture, the Russian navy sent vessels from its Northern Fleet, based at Severomorsk, into the Arctic last month for the first time since 1991. An anti-submarine destroyer and the missile cruiser the Marshal Ustinov are now patrolling the area. Moscow claims the ships are there to protect its fishermen, but analysts believe they are Russia’s “foot in the door” in this energy-rich region.

US mission to Arctic will lay claim to gas reserves

A US Coast Guard cutter will set out on Thursday on a three-week trip to map a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland, about 600 miles north of Alaska.

The cutter Healy will then launch again on September 6 accompanied by Canadian scientists aboard an icebreaker, who will conduct further tests to help identify the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska.

The US is attempting to prove the Alaskan continental shelf stretches far beyond the 200-mile limit where coastal countries have sovereign rights over natural resources.

The joint operation comes amid increasing international competition to tap the Arctic's unexplored energy stores, thought to include 90 billion barrels of oil, about 15 per cent of the world's undiscovered reserves, as well as a third of the world's undiscovered natural gas, according to the US Geological Survey.

The five countries that border the Arctic Ocean - Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US - dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters.

Russia has claimed 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters and in a move marking the escalating rivalry, planted its flag on the ocean floor of the North Pole last summer.

Rush to Arctic as warming opens oil deposits

It's a scramble for the spoils of global warming as the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is opening access to previously unreachable deposits of oil and gas, setting off a race by northern nations - including the United States, Canada and Russia - to claim them.

The pursuit of those resources will be underscored this week as the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy sails north from Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday to map the sea floor of the Chukchi Cap, an area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea. The maps could bolster U.S. claims to the area as part of its extended outer continental shelf.

The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed last month what the oil industry had long suspected when the agency released an estimate that the area north of the Arctic Circle may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or roughly 13 percent of the world's total undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

The dash to stake out territory across the Arctic has accelerated since Russia sent one of its submarines last August to plant the country's flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, provoking an outcry by other nations that viewed it as an unauthorized land grab.