The diplomacy coming out of Washington these days, the more so under Secretary of State Rice and President Bush, appears to follow the norm that laws are made to be disregarded, disrespected, ignored, manipulated or simply broken, which is patently obvious through the sheer hypocrisy of Washington’s position on the territorial integrity of Georgia. Let us then examine this question from a legal perspective, which is supposed to be definitive and binding in civilised countries, in states of law which follow due process, presupposing that the USA wishes to include itself in this group of nations.

Beginning with Abkhazia and Georgia, Georgia was a signatory of the Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and was bound under this Constitution to respect all its clauses. One of these was the voluntary dissolution of the Union and the clause which states that minority groups (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) in other Republics (Georgia) had the statutory and constitutional right to a referendum to decide as to the degree of independence/autonomy/self-government that their people chose in a free and fair electoral process.

Georgia, as so often, broke the law by not holding these referenda, so just this fact makes a valid case for these two republics to decide for themselves whether they are a part of Georgia or not. It is after all their right and Georgia was bound by it.

To compound the issue, Moscow spend 17 long years negotiating peace with Georgia stressing at all times the need to forge a solution which satisfied Tskhinval (S. Ossetia), Sukhum (Abkhazia) and Tblissi. Georgia responded at best with manipulation, insults and insolence and at worst, on more than one occasion, with violence, as we saw in the slaughter of 2.000 Russian civilians in Tskhinval on August 7/8, a detail which the Bush/Rice/Cheney regime did not have the decency to refer to once and which the international media did its best to either ignore or worse still, manipulate the facts.

So on that fateful night, Georgia itself by its actions blew out the candles lighting any path towards its territorial integrity. Saying to Ossetians and Abkhazes that they must live inside Georgia is paramount to telling Jews to voluntarily present themselves at the gates of a concentration camp in Nazi Europe and smilingly accept the precept that Arbeit macht frei.

There are reactions to every action and those who perpetrate acts of butchery must live with and face up to the consequences. Here we introduce the second point of law, namely that Russia’s actions, giving the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia the chance to realise their right to self-determination, was fully compliant and totally right under the UN Charter and in accordance with the norms of international law.

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