International Reaction on Presidential Convoy Shots

NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hood Scheffer, and EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, made reserved comments about a shooting incident that took place when a motorcade, carrying the Georgian and Polish Presidents, approached a South Ossetian administrative border on November 23.

‘I don’t know exactly what happened,” the Deutsche Welle reported quoting Scheffer. “It is wrong and certainly not in the spirit of the [ceasefire] agreement."

"We are not blaming anyone, but I blame certainly those who started the shooting," he added.

Solana said that he was in contact with EU monitors on the ground and waiting for their report.

Sean McCormack, U.S. Department of States spokesman, said there have been “conflicting reports” about the incident.

“I have obviously seen the statements from the two presidents involved. I can’t confirm one way or the other,” he said at a news briefing on November 24. “What’s important here and what – you know, what these kinds of news reports and allegations make clear is the importance of effectively deploying all of the monitors in this region, and also working on all the various tracks of the ceasefire so that there is a more peaceful and better situation in Georgia for everybody.”

Meanwhile, Polish President, Lec Kaczynski, said in Poland after he returned back from Georgia, that he believed that the Russian soldiers fired shorts when he and his Georgian counterpart approached the South Ossetian administrative border.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political rival of Kaczynski, said on November 24 that he had ordered a detailed report to be drawn up on the shooting incident, Reuters reported. “Nowhere in the world can the Polish president be put at such risk," he told reporters during in London.
 
Meanwhile in Warsaw, foreign ministers from the Visegrad Group of states including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia as well as the three EU Baltic states, Bulgaria, Romania and Sweden condemned the incident and called for an investigation, the Deutsche Welle reported.

"The ministers express deepest concern and strongly condemn the incident in Georgia on 23 November 2008 when machine-gun fire was opened in immediate vicinity of a motorcade carrying the presidents of Georgia and Poland, close to South Ossetia, Georgia," the minister said in a joint statement. “The Ministers call for proper investigation and clarification of the incident.”

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