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Russia and Georgia swapped accusations today presenting a huge challenge to the EU-sponsored ceasefire agreement designed to end seven days of fighting.
The accord had envisioned Russian and Georgian forces returning to their original positions. These conditions have yet to be met. The United Nations estimates 100-thousand people have been uprooted by the fighting, including 12-thousand South Ossetians who fled north into Russia.
F. William Engdahl believes that “Russia China and the nations of Eurasia are beginning to cooperate politically and economically and this is a nightmare for Washington.”

Story Transcript

The geopolitical stakes in Georgia part 3
Producer: Zaa Nkweta

ZAA NKWETA (VOICEOVER): Russia and Georgia swapped accusations today, presenting a huge challenge to the EU-sponsored ceasefire agreement designed to end seven days of fighting. The accord had envisioned Russian and Georgian forces returning to their original positions. These conditions have yet to be met. F. William Engdahl believes that Russia, China, and the nations of Eurasia are beginning to cooperate economically and politically, and this is a nightmare for Washington.

WILLIAM ENGDAHL: We’re playing with World War III by miscalculation in this whole attempt to allow Georgia into NATO and the Ukraine into NATO. The US could stop this whole thing, I think, in 24 hours if the president were to announce that it was dropping the request to admit Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and was dropping its attempt to build missile defense in Poland, Ukraine, and on the borders of Russia that would allow it a nuclear first-strike ability. There’s a big difference between the European media coverage and US media, such as CNN or The New York Times. The European media coverage is much more accurate as to the sequence of events that Saakashvili and the Georgian military initiated this. They had Israeli and American Special Forces advising and commingled with Georgian forces in doing this. So this is highly provocative in international terms. Also, Georgia had an agreement since 2006 with Russia to have status-quo freeze on the conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and to solve it not by force but by diplomacy. So Saakashvili just tore up his own agreement when he marched into South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The point is Russia is being encircled stepwise in a game of chess for control of Russia, control of China. This is the policy of Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers; it’s also the policy of John McCain’s foreign policy advisers. So either president who’s elected in November are committed to this provocative, aggressive foreign policy vis-à-vis Russia. The real point is Russia and China and the nations of Eurasia are beginning to cooperate for the first time in perhaps 70 years, economically and politically, and that’s a nightmare in Washington. And, ironically, it’s the policy of the current administration since the invasion of Iraq that’s brought these countries closer together, because they realize America’s in the hands of people who are intent on militarily controlling the world, and nobody quite likes that. I think the crucial next question to watch is whether the 10 European Union NATO members that voted against allowing Georgia and Ukraine to apply for NATO membership last April, when the NATO ministers met, what their attitude is toward Georgia entering NATO. That decision will come in December. I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to convince European governments that a country as unstable and a leader as incalculable as Saakashvili—. Saakashvili, by the way, is not the peace-loving, rosy figure that the Western media’s played him up to be. Inside Georgia his track record is that of a corrupt gangster. I mean, there’s this clan politics of the Caucasus that we’re seeing in Georgia, but he simply happened to be a US-educated, hand-picked figure who agreed to play by the script that Washington gave him.

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Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy