Georgia inquiry criticizes military, but not war

By Margarita Antidze and Matt Robinson

TBILISI (Reuters) - A Georgian parliamentary inquiry has said the military conduct of its August conflict with Russia was flawed but backed President Mikheil Saakashvili's attack on the breakaway South Ossetia region.

The report echoed domestic criticism of the military performance in the five-day war in which the Russian army drove Georgian security forces from pro-Moscow South Ossetia and advanced to within 45 km (30 miles) of the capital Tbilisi.

But the findings, published on Thursday, supported Saakashvili's decision to launch an air and ground assault on the rebel capital Tskhinvali on Aug 7 after months of skirmishes and Georgian accusations of Russian provocation.

Saakashvili has come under fire from Georgia's fractious opposition, which accuses him of walking into a war the former Soviet state could not possibly win.

His young, Western-backed government has since said it was responding to a Russian invasion, a claim Moscow dismissed as absurd. Russia said it intervened to protect civilians, and recognized South Ossetia and a second breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

"A mass military invasion and the fact of artillery bombing indicate that Russia, together with separatist military units, started operations on Georgian territory, to which Georgia responded with a defensive war," the report said.

Diplomats say Georgia was clearly baited by Russia but that Saakashvili's Aug 7 assault was bewildering and Tbilisi's standing with its Western allies has been severely tested.

"The Georgian leadership managed to halt the Russian military aggression during the August events," the parliamentary commission said. But, "serious systematic and personnel failures took place."

Western governments criticized Russia's response as "disproportionate" but a freeze on European Union and NATO ties with energy power Russia was reversed months later.

A NATO official said high-level talks with Russia would resume on Friday with lunch between alliance Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Russian envoy Dmitry Rogozin.

LACK OF STRATEGY, COORDINATION

The Georgian parliamentary report said civilian and military leaders failed to foresee and prepare for Russian intervention. Operations lacked strategy and coordination, and there were problems in military communication.

"As a result, there were serious failures in managing military operations," the bipartisan commission said. The system of reserve forces was "inadequate and even counter-productive." Georgia's military chief of staff was dismissed after the war and the defense minister replaced this month.

At talks in Geneva on Thursday, mediators said Georgian and South Ossetian officials had agreed to work to prevent or resolve security incidents around their de facto border, where a fragile, EU-brokered ceasefire is frequently tested by accusations of shooting from both sides.

The war strained already difficult relations between the West and Russia in a region where they compete for influence over oil and gas supplies from Central Asia to Western markets.