Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Statement by Ambassador Valery Loshchinin of the Russian Federation to the Conference on Disarmament 26th August 2008

Unofficial Transcript

Thank you Mr President.

First of all I would like to avail myself of the opportunity for the first time convey warm wishes to the Ambassador of Korea in his future work and welcome the new Ambassador of France and would like to reaffirm that we are open to joint work and hope that this work will lead to very good results.

Mr President, in light of the issue that was raised again, namely the issue of South Ossetia, I would like inform you about some of the issues, to get the true picture of what is happening in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And one has to admit that there is a “certain of lies coming from leadership of Georgia, President Saakashvili which are quite willingly spread by numerous mass media. Numerous attempts have been made to portray the Georgian –Ossetian conflict as a conflict between Georgia and Russia. what is being ignored here are the history facts and chain of events that took place after when the first President of Independent Georgia, Gamsakhurdia, in 1992 after the fall of the USSR proclaimed as the objective of his policies, Georgia for Georgians and started aggressive military actions against the South Ossetians and the Abkhaz and these steps were at eliminating these people.

We have to point out that in modern history Georgia has only been a state for only twenty years. From 1918 - 1921 then from 1981 up till today. And we have to say that each time Georgia became an independent state, it used all possible means in order to apply pressure and eliminate the small people of its own country. During these twenty years, it attacked its neighbors, the Abkhaz and South Ossetians, nine times. All these polices were culminated the aggression of Georgia against the people of South Ossetia launched during the night of the 8th of August 2008.

Some western media, political scientists, even some Western Governments, NATO, are trying to present russia as victim, whitewash and save the failed regime and taking steps to rearm Georgia even though everyone can see what the rearmament of the aggressors has lead to. It is clear that the leadership of Georgia is purchasing weapons, not simply purchasing but sometimes it is even shipped as humanitarian assistance. This is done not for defensive purposes but to continue to resolve through the use of force the problems it has been creating. This is also the conclusion we can draw also from the recent statement made by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of NATO in Brussels, instead of condemning the aggressor, NATO is defending this criminal regime and here they are trying to make Moscow responsible for everything, threatening to break cooperation with Russia and the President of the Russian Federation was quite clear on this subject.

Yesterday, for example he said “” we have been developing consistently our relations with NATO for a very long time. We’d like to see this relations as comprehensive and based on a partnership but we do not need illusions of a partnership when we are being surrounded by all sides by military bases and more and more countries are being dragged into North Atlantic Alliance and we are being told, don’t worry everything is alright. Of course we don’t like this and especially so when we see measures of containment that we have seen over the past few years. We did not provoke these actions and we did not want them but if we look at things seriously, is the states of the North Atlantic Alliance that should be and are interested in this cooperation and not the Russian Federation and if NATO in essence is breaking off this cooperation, then this is not a big deal for us, we are ready to take any decisions including terminating our relations completely, of course this will be the most difficult evolution of events and I simply hope our partners will think about this.”

Another step in this chain of objective and biased approach to the assessment of the situation and the continued attempts to block the approval of Security Council resolutions in the support of the six principles that have been elaborated by Presidents Medvedev and Sarkozy.

The aggression of Gerogia against the citizens of South Ossetia, and the attack Russian peace workers which led to the loss of many lives shown that the historical role as the guarantor of security in the Caucasus is objectively increasing. the Russian military operation in that forcing the regime of Saakashvili to peace was appropriate and legitmate response to this clear aggression. The peoples of south Ossetia and Abkhazia see Russia asa protector, a guarantor of their safe and secured developed and this is why yesterday on the 25th August 2008, the state duma, federation council, the upper and lower chambers of the Russian Parliament, in response to the people’s request by the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, unanimously even though different parties are presented in the parliament, unanimously adopted an appeal to the leaders of the Russian Federation and parliaments of other countries on the need to recognise the independence of the republic of south Ossetia and the republic of Abkhazia .

The real threat of genocide of peoples of these republics by Georgia makes this decision timely and legitimate. Now this question is being reviewed by the executive and president of the Russian Federation. At the same time we should make a clear distinction between relations with Russia with the current regime in Georgia and the Georgian People. Politicians come and go, but people stay and we are convinced that in the very near future and we have seen signals of this.

The Georgian people in its wisdom, give proper assessment of the criminal actions of the current ruling regime as fully and wholly responsibe for the tradgey and will have to respond fully to the Ossetians, the Abkhazia, their own people and international community.

Now on the comments criticising Russia on the excessive and indiscriminate use of force and the answer I can give to that is as follows. Excessive use of force is, the use against children, women, elderly in South Ossetia, multiple rocket launcher systems grad,and as we know they don’t hit individual targets but cover entire areas as does the use of heavy artillery in peaceful populations, the use of mortars and air bombs, through its actions, Russia, simply forced Gerogia to stop its aggressions and return its warriors to the barracks. Although in this respect, Tbilisi is far from fulfilling its commitments under the six principles.

In light of the accusations by Georgia, indiscriminate use of weapons against Georgian civilians on the violations of Inhumane Weapons, we’d like to say the following. The professional discussions of these issues, we have a specialized form on the Convention on inhumane weapons and we’ll talk about this on a separate occasion and we will provide you on facts and figures on what actually took place. And facts actually show that the overall numbers victims of the peaceful population of the South Ossetia are a result of the barbaric acts of the Georgian military is about 2000 people. These are the latest figures which show that this was a planned action aimed at eliminating a peaceful population and I would like to repeat that we will present these facts to the international community and this should demonstrate on who was the one that used inhuman weapons and attacked peaceful cities and villages. It is ethnic cleansing, crime against humanity, war crimes of the regime in Tbilisi. Here we have to be clear a spade a spade. It was the leadership of Georgia that launched the aggression, the leadership of Georgia that carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide, Russia in fact, saved the people of South Ossetia from genocide and prevented what could have been the exacerbation of the situation in the caucuses.

Thank you.