World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations"

The Czech voice has come out in strong discord amidst the chorus of East European states, the majority of which supported the Georgian authorities in the conflict with Russia. The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, blames both sides for starting the war. And all those involved in the conflict, in his opinion, did not put their best foot forward.

In his reply to letters addressed to him in the newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes, the head of the Czech Republic denounces both Tbilisi that prepared the attack on South Ossetia and that is responsible for the death of innocent people, as well as Russia for intruding into the territory of a sovereign country. Vaclav Klaus urges not to seek any parallels connected with the intrusion of Soviet armed forces in Czechoslovakia in 1968. At that time, the Czechoslovak reformers were not going to any kind of war, and the Army of Czechoslovakia did not offer any resistance to the aggressors.

“I definitively condemn the Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the killing of civilians in that region, as I equally condemn the massive intervention by Russian troops. It grieves me that such a real state of affairs is not realized by many. Once again all kinds of myths are being concocted, and once again they are beginning to play a game with distractive maneuvers in connection with this tragic situation,” the Czech President writes.

“In any case, millions of people in the Caucasus have found themselves in a tragic situation. Ordinary people, not politicians, are always the victims…I cannot subscribe to the current fashionable opinion that puts “the good guy” tag on Georgia and “the bad guy” tag on Russia. I consider this to be a very simplistic view on the world and that is why I intend to write an in-depth article on this subject in order to show that I look upon such things in a different way.”

As for the leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Estonia who traveled to Tbilisi to support Mikheli Saakashvili and who urged the NATO members to accept Georgia into the military bloc as soon as possible, then “bearing in mind that stance… taken by my colleagues… in their declaration, I simply cannot share their vision of the situation,” Klaus points out.

In his opinion, “everything that happened with Georgia is the direct result of Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. The case with the Serbian province that unilaterally proclaimed its independence in February “gave Russia a powerful lever of justification for its intervention,” admits Klaus who fears a repetition of that precedent in the future “and not only in the Caucasus.”