AFP
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Eylül 09, 2008 14:51
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney held talks Tuesday with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as part of Washington’s effort to rally European support for Georgia after its conflict with Russia.
The meeting came a day after Russia pledged anew to withdraw troops from parts of Georgia but also planned to keep a military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and to begin formal diplomatic ties with the two breakaway areas.
Italy has aimed to mediate between its Western allies and Russia in the wake of the conflict, which flared on August 8 when Russian troops entered Georgia to push back a Georgian offensive to retake the rebel enclave of South Ossetia.
Cheney, who arrived in Rome on Sunday after a tour of ex-Soviet republics Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine, began talks with Berlusconi at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT). They were scheduled to brief reporters at 2:45 pm (1245 GMT).
Italy has urged the West not to isolate Russia while at the same time calling on Moscow to comply with an EU-brokered truce pact that demanded a pullout of Russian troops deep inside Georgian territory.
Following talks on Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to withdraw troops from all of Georgia except the two rebel regions provided the European Union deploys at least 200 observers by October 1 to ensure the security of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
However, Medvedev also stressed that Russia would not reverse its decision to recognize the two rebel regions as independent, a move which has drawn widespread condemnation in the West.
On Sunday, Cheney urged members of the NATO military alliance to unite in order to ward off a return of "line-drawing" in Europe and said Russia was looking to regain its Soviet-era dominance.
"We know that if one country is allowed to unilaterally redraw the borders of another, it will happen -- and it will happen again. We know that if we permit a new line to be drawn across Europe, that line will be drawn," Cheney said.
A senior U.S. administration official told reporters travelling with Cheney on Monday that the vice president had seen broad support among European allies for a unified front to protect nations territorial integrity.
"It is not just a U.S. problem, all of Europe has a stake in how this is handled and whether or not these sovereign independent states remain free and independently sovereign states," the official said.
