Brussels, 30 September: Russia's permanent representative at NATO, Dmitriy Rogozin, believes that now that the independent international commission investigating the circumstances of the conflict in the South Caucasus in August 2008 has published its findings, some Western politicians "will have to apologize to Russia for pouring a lot of mud on it". (Passage omitted: the report, according to Russia's EU envoy, accused Georgia of unleashing the conflict)

"In this report, the truth found a little hole and came out," Rogozin told journalists in Brussels.

According to Rogozin, the report "for the first time confirmed the Russian argument that Georgia carried out an act of aggression".

Rogozin noted that at a Russia-NATO Council meeting on Wednesday (30 September), none of its participants spoke in favour of the report. If the report had accused Russia, Rogozin said, "I can imagine the cheers in the corridors of the organization where we are now".

(ITAR-TASS news agency reported Rogozin saying that the commission's findings would have been even more critical of Georgia if the EU had not previously declared its position on the war. "One must understand that this commission worked in conditions where the EU had already adopted some assessments of what happened. The international commission had very little room for manoeuvre," Rogozin said. (ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1746 gmt 30 Sep 09))

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