Talk of "war" and "ethnic cleansing" hit European TV channels on Tuesday (26 August) as France and Russia debated Moscow's hard backing of rebel groups in Georgia. But plans for next week's EU summit and new EU-Russia energy links remain unaltered for now. "We fear a war and we don't want one," French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said on the France 2 television station, after Russia gave formal recognition to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions earlier in the day. "If it's hot, we don't want it." Kouchner (centre) in Georgia during the five-day war The minister showed a map of South Ossetia and pointed to the town of Akhalgori, saying: "Tonight, Russian troops are sweeping through it, pushing Georgians out and over the border. It's ethnic cleansing." In a separate interview on France's LCI channel, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dared the EU to impose diplomatic sanctions at next week's EU summit. "If they want a degradation of relations, they will get it," he said. "The ball is in the European camp."
Talk of "war" and "ethnic cleansing" hit European TV channels on Tuesday (26 August) as France and Russia debated Moscow's hard backing of rebel groups in Georgia. But plans for next week's EU summit and new EU-Russia energy links remain unaltered for now.
"We fear a war and we don't want one," French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said on the France 2 television station, after Russia gave formal recognition to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions earlier in the day. "If it's hot, we don't want it."
Kouchner (centre) in Georgia during the five-day war
The minister showed a map of South Ossetia and pointed to the town of Akhalgori, saying: "Tonight, Russian troops are sweeping through it, pushing Georgians out and over the border. It's ethnic cleansing."
In a separate interview on France's LCI channel, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dared the EU to impose diplomatic sanctions at next week's EU summit. "If they want a degradation of relations, they will get it," he said. "The ball is in the European camp."
And he has zero power in this government, givne that doreign policy is run from the Elysée, by Sarkozy, Guéant (hie chief of staff) and Levitte (his diplomatic advisot and quasi "National Security Advisor", the well- respected former ambassador to Washington) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
