"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao today, seeking support from Russia's biggest Asian ally for its recognition of two breakaway Georgian regions, a move widely condemned in the West," Bloomberg reported. "Medvedev 'informed' Hu about his decision to recognise the statehood of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during a meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, the president's spokeswoman Natalia Timakova told reporters without elaborating... " 'Russia's main aim is to get support from the organisation for its military action and approval in one form or another for recognising South Ossetian independence,' said Yevgeny Volk, an analyst in Moscow for the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. 'It is clear that Russia is using it as a counterweight to the West in the conflict and its recognition of South Ossetia.' "While Russia wants diplomatic recognition from members of the group, Volk said such a decision for countries like China and India, which have separatist regions of their own, would amount to 'chopping the branch they sit on.' " Newsweek said: "There was a time when China might have looked on with pleasure as its two great rivals, Russia and the United States, went toe-to-toe. No longer, as Beijing's low-key response suggests. President Hu Jintao met with both Russia's Vladimir Putin and America's George W Bush as the [Olympic] games began without saying a word about the bloodshed [in Georgia], and the Foreign Ministry stuck to anodyne cliches, expressing 'grave concern' and calling for a ceasefire. This tentative language reflects the fact that the conflict has presented China with several awkward problems. "To start, it confronts this avowedly neutral nation with an ugly choice over whom to side with: the United States or Russia - a choice China doesn't want to make. Russia's support for the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, like US support for Kosovo's independence earlier this year, crosses China's diplomatic red line, designed to outlaw meddlesome questions about Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang." The US-based Georgian Daily said: "According to some Russian analysts, Moscow will not pick up any support at the Shanghai Cooperation Council meeting in Dushanbe today. On the one hand, they note, 'Russia does not dominate' that group, and on the other, China, which is a rising power, 'is not interested in a sharp confrontation with the US and Nato'. "Not surprisingly, Abkhazia and South Ossetia greeted each other during the day, and the government of Transdniestria, the breakaway unrecognised region in Moldova, also sent messages of congratulation to the two newly 'recognised' states. "But beyond that, the only bright spot - albeit a not unproblematic one - Moscow could possibly find in this first day after its move came from the Palestinian Hamas movement, which welcomed Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, seeing this as a precedent which would 'give hope to all oppressed peoples.' The Guardian reported: "US and Russian warships took up positions in the Black Sea today in a risky war of nerves on opposing sides of the Georgia conflict. "With the Russians effectively controlling Georgia's main naval base of Poti, Moscow also dispatched the Moskva missile cruiser and two smaller craft on 'peacekeeping' duties at the port of Sukhumi on the coast of Abkhazia, the breakaway region that the Kremlin recognised as independent yesterday. "The Americans, wary of escalating an already fraught situation, cancelled the scheduled docking in Poti of the US Coast Guard vessel, the Dallas, and instead sent it to the southern Georgian-controlled port of Batumi, 200km (124 miles) from the Russian ships, where it delivered humanitarian aid." RIA Novosti said: "Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia will have to respond militarily to the deployment of elements of a US missile shield in Central Europe. "The deal to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland was reached in mid-August, and followed the signing of an agreement on July 8 by the US and Czech foreign ministries to place a US radar in the Czech Republic. " 'These missiles are close to our borders and constitute a threat to us,' Medvedev said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday. 'This will create additional tension and we will have to respond to it in some way, naturally using military means.' " The Associated Press reported: "A key civil nuclear agreement between Russia and the US looks likely to be shelved until next year at the earliest amid mounting tensions over the fate of Georgia's breakaway republics. "The nuclear pact - signed last May - set the framework to give the US access to Russian state-of-the-art nuclear technologies, while helping Russia establish an international nuclear fuel storage facility for spent fuel. Russia cannot achieve that goal without the deal, since the US controls the vast majority of the world's nuclear fuel." AP also said: "Syria's President Bashar Assad has publicly stepped up his outreach to old ally Russia in recent days, seeking aid to build up Syrian military forces and offering Moscow help in return - in an apparent effort to exploit a new Russian-American rift. "US officials have noticed: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Mideast leaders this week that they should worry about Syria's efforts to gain more sophisticated weapons." In an analysis for the Middle East Times, Nikita Petrov wrote: "Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during Assad's visit that Moscow 'is ready to supply Syria only with defensive weapons, ones that do not upset the balance of strength in the region.' "This means that Syria - as Moscow promised to Tel Aviv - will not get the Iskander system. Regarding ground- and air-based air defense units, including interceptor fighters, they are not considered offensive armaments and are exempt from Russian-Israeli agreements. "Military technical cooperation between Moscow and Damascus needs re-evaluating. Syria owes Russia $3 billion for weapons supplied to it, and this on top of Damascus' $10 billion debt for armaments sold in Soviet times which Moscow forgave, incidentally, for a pledge to spend another $2 billion on arms purchases from Russia." Meanwhile, in Open Democracy, Robert Parsons wrote: "As the dust from Russia's tank-tracks settles again over Georgia, the accounting inside the country has begun. For the moment, the accent is on damage- assessment and reconstruction but the focus is already slowly shifting to the role in starting the conflict of Mikheil Saakashvili. Georgia's young president will soon find himself in the spotlight again and it will not be a comfortable place. "So far, the criticism has been muted. I spent two weeks in Georgia in the immediate wake of the Russian attack and found few ready to publicly condemn Saakashvili's decision on the night of 7 Aug 2008 to launch an offensive against South Ossetian positions. But Saakashvili should not mistake that for acquiescence. "Across the country - from occupied Poti on the Black Sea coast to Tbilisi in the east - the murmur of complaint is growing louder. Why, people are asking, did he allow himself to be dragged into a fight that Georgia could not possibly win?"
US offers tax breaks to Jewish settlers in West Bank
"The United States says Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank threaten any peace between Israel and the Palestinians - yet it also encourages Americans to help support settlers by offering tax breaks on donations," Reuters reported. "As Condoleezza Rice flew in on Monday for another round of peace talks, Israeli and American supporters of settlements defended the tax incentives, which benefit West Bank enclaves deemed illegal by the World Court and which the US secretary of state has said are an obstacle to Palestinian statehood. "Pro-settler groups say they are entitled to the tax breaks because their work is 'humanitarian', not political, and reject any comparison to Palestinian charities, some of which face US sanctions over suspected links to Islamist groups like Hamas." The Guardian said: "Israel has nearly doubled the number of homes under construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank this year despite continuing negotiations with the Palestinians for a peace agreement, according to a new report published yesterday. "Peace Now, an Israeli organisation, said the housing ministry had begun work on 433 new housing units between January and May this year, compared with 240 in the same period last year. Its findings were based on figures from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. "In total, the group said more than 1,000 new buildings, representing 2,600 housing units, were under construction in settlements, with 55 per cent of them east of the vast concrete and steel barrier Israel has built in and along the West Bank."