Las críticas contra Saakashvili están arreciando ahora que se han levantado las restricciones a la libertad de expresión en Georgia (vigentes durante la contienda). El Washington Post informa que varias voces reclaman investigaciones sobre los errores diplomáticos y tácticos cometidos por el Gobierno, y algunos analistas predicen que Saakashvili será presionado para que renuncie.
David Usupashvili, leader of the opposition Republican Party, said he had serious concerns about the decision to fight the much larger Russian army. "I don't believe that the Georgian government started this military action, but I condemn my government's action to respond with a full-scale military conflict" (...)
David Gamkrelidze, leader of the opposition New Rights party, said that "[b]y his military rhetoric, and all kinds of provocations, Saakashvili tried to show that he can return these territories by the military way, that he has this capacity, he has this force." (...)
Officials present at some of the prewar discussions said that Saakashvili and a tight group of supporters seemed convinced they had the military power to win back South Ossetia -- which Georgian forces attacked on the night of Aug. 7 -- within a few hours or days and were not interested in opposing points of view.
El Gobierno georgiano, por otro lado, aseguró la semana pasada que tenía "pruebas sólidas" de que Rusia inició el conflicto. Ahora acaba de desvelar que estas pruebas consisten en conversaciones telefónicas rusas interceptadas antes de la guerra:
The phone calls refer to Russian troop movements into South Ossetia on August 7th. Russia has dismissed the significance of the phone calls, insisting that the troop movements were just part of ordinary rotations of the peacekeepers stationed in the separatist province since the the early 1990’s. They also suggested that any “major” troop movement into South Ossetia as alleged by the Georgians would have been detected by NATO’s surveillance satellites, and thus far there has been no indication that this was the case. The phone calls do not specify the quantity of troops being moved.
Por su parte, las autoridades de Osetia del Sur dicen haber encontrado los restos de 500 de las 1600 víctimas civiles causadas por la intervención georgiana.
Authorities in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia said on Tuesday they had located the remains of 500 of the 1,600 people they say died during Georgia's August 7/8 bombardment and invasion.
"Preliminary information received by the investigation team by questioning neighbors and relatives showed that over 1,600 people died in South Ossetia as a result of the invasion by the Georgian army," South Ossetia's Prosecutor-General, Taimuraz Khugayev, told Interfax news agency.
(...) Khugayev did not explain why investigators had not discovered all the estimated 1,600 civilian dead.
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