Moscow and Tbilisi Go to the Democratic Convention!

Guns Silent, Moscow and Tbilisi Open New Front in Denver

new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/us/politics/26policy.html

By PETER BAKER
Published: August 25, 2008
WASHINGTON — Just hours before the Democratic National Convention was gaveled open on Monday, several party leaders sat down with the delegation from Georgia. But for these Georgians, the term “battleground state” had an altogether grimmer meaning.
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They came from the small former Soviet republic that fought a brief and disastrous war with Russia this month, and they were in Denver to plead their case to representatives, senators, delegates and any other political figures they could buttonhole.
A competing set of envoys from Moscow likewise made the rounds at the Democratic gathering, hoping to repair some of the damage to American-Russian ties. The Georgian and Russian governments plan to send representatives to the Republican convention in Minnesota next week as well.
With the guns now silent, the war between Russia and Georgia has shifted into a new phase, one for the hearts and minds of the Americans. The Georgians have a head start, embraced by the Bush administration and many in both parties as a small, emerging democracy bullied by Moscow. The Russians argue that the situation has been distorted and that in any case the relationship between Washington and Moscow is far too critical to let it unravel.
The timing proves particularly delicate, heading into two weeks when the parties formally anoint their presidential nominees. The attention on the Russia-Georgia conflict in recent weeks has already thrust national security back to the top of the campaign agenda and may have helped inspire Senator Barack Obama to choose Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as his running mate.
Mr. Biden had just traveled to Tbilisi to show solidarity with the Georgians, and Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, made an unannounced trip there on Monday as part of a humanitarian mission. The man Mr. Biden seeks to replace, Vice President Dick Cheney, announced Monday that he would go to Georgia the day after addressing the Republican National Convention next week.
The shadow struggle in Denver got under way with envoys from both Georgia and Russia seeking out influential players.
“It is important for us to meet the key politicians in this country to make sure they have the right sense of what’s happening in our country and the right sense of what happened,” David Bakradze, the chairman of the Georgian Parliament and a former foreign minister, said by telephone from Denver.
Among those Mr. Bakradze and his compatriots met with on Monday were Madeleine K. Albright, former secretary of state; Richard C. Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations; and Susan E. Rice, senior foreign policy adviser to Mr. Obama. (A session with Howard Dean, the party chairman, was postponed.)
In all their discussions, the Georgians argued for bipartisan firmness against Moscow.
“It’s not about Georgia,” Mr. Bakradze said. “It’s a much higher risk at stake. It’s about Russia forcefully changing the borders of the post-Soviet space.”
On the other side of the struggle in Denver was a delegation led by Mikhail V. Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of Parliament, both of whose houses just recommended that Moscow recognize the independence of two Georgian breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In addition, Igor Yurgens, a close adviser to Dmitri A. Medvedev, the Russian president, traveled to Washington last week for a back-channel effort to smooth over tensions and assess the state of relations. Mr. Yurgens, who runs a Moscow research organization headed by Mr. Medvedev, met with officials at the White House, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency as well as Russia scholars outside government, and spoke with advisers to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain.
Mr. Yurgens did not come as an official representative of Mr. Medvedev, but said his trip had been approved by senior Russian officials. In an interview, he said he wanted to find a way to lower the heat over Georgia and make clear that in Moscow’s view, the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had provoked the confrontation. He said several of the Americans agreed that Russia had had a right to respond but felt that the response was too heavy-handed.
Either way, Mr. Yurgens said, he emphasized the value of ties between the United States and Russia.
“Is it too much to sacrifice for essentially one man, a bipartisan relationship of this magnitude?” he said. “We have to calm down a little bit and step back.”
A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Yurgens had been told in strong terms that Russia needed to abide quickly by its agreement to withdraw fully from Georgia, something Moscow says it has done but Washington, Paris and Tbilisi dispute.
“Their actions,” the official said, “sooner rather than later, are going to make a huge difference in what we’re going to be able to do and how we might be able to get things back on track.”
Mr. Yurgens got a similar warning during a private lunch presided over by former Senator Gary Hart at the Nixon Center, a Washington research organization.
“At our meeting, the message was delivered loud and clear,” said Dimitri K. Simes, the center’s president. “I’m not aware of a single person in the mainstream who thinks it’s O.K. for Russia to keep forces in Georgia.”