Georgia blamed for starting war with Russia

By Timothy Heritage

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - An independent report blamed Georgia Wednesday for starting last year's five-day war with Russia, but said Moscow's military response went beyond reasonable limits and violated international law.

The report commissioned by the European Union said both sides had broken international humanitarian laws and found evidence of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Georgians during Russia's intervention in the rebel province of South Ossetia.

Each side said the report backed up its interpretation of the war. But the findings were particularly critical of U.S. ally Georgia's conduct under President Mikheil Saakashvili and are likely to further damage his political standing.

They could also deepen Western concerns about his leadership and the stability of the former Soviet republic which have set back its hopes of joining NATO and the EU and shaken confidence in oil and gas routes running through the South Caucasus.

"In the Mission's view, it was Georgia which triggered off the war when it attacked Tskhinvali (in South Ossetia) with heavy artillery on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008," said Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, who led the investigation.

The Kremlin was fast to praise what it describe as the key finding of the report. "We can only welcome that the commission found that the war was started by Georgia," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalya Timakova told reporters.

The report said the war followed tensions and provocations by Russia, but Tagliavini said: "None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack lend it a valid explanation."

Saakashvili had said Georgia was responding to an invasion by Russian forces when it attacked breakaway South Ossetia, but the report found no evidence of this.