Georgia and Russia have agreed to an EU-sponsored peace plan to end five days of fierce fighting in Georgia that has killed at least several hundred people and left thousands homeless.

Officials from Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova are in the Georgian city of Batumi for the first day of the two-day GUAM summit.

Days before the NATO summit in Bucharest began, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili rolled out a new peace initiative for breakaway Abkhazia.

Speaking today at NATO's summit in Bucharest, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the alliance wants to welcome Ukraine and Georgia as members someday.

The ink has hardly dried on Kosovo's independence declaration.  And already, reactions are flowing from frozen conflict zones in the former Soviet Union as if on cue.

Georgia says it will move to formally ask Russian peacekeepers to leave the breakaway region of Abkhazia following reports that they seized and beat five Georgian police officers.

The peculiarity of the national security programs of the internationally recognized South Caucasian states is that all of them are being developed in a region that does not yet have a final political map due to a number of unresolved internal conflicts.

VLADIMIR CHIZHOV

The outcome of the extraordinary EU summit held on September 1 in Brussels was more or less predictable, both in terms of the views expressed by the EU member states and in terms of the EU Presidency conclusion.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

Yesterday I could say that in Europe there were differences in relation to Russia’s actions in South Ossetia. Some countries blamed Georgia for the conflict, others blamed Russia. But at present there is a different tendency.

ANDREY MAKARYCHEV

South Ossetia and Georgia have been at war with each other since last week. The towns and cities came under fire, the reservists were mobilized. There are the killed and the wounded, and a lot of refugees.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The guns are bellowing now in South Ossetia and Georgia, and muses of those who might mull over the solution of the grave crisis, are still silent. Many things including the people’s lives depend on how long the diplomats and policy-makers will be inactive.

SERGEI BAGAPSH

What will Abkhazia do, if Georgia joins NATO? Abkhazia will do nothing. Let Georgia join NATO even tomorrow. We do not care about that.

EROSI KITSMARISHVILI

Currently, there are several negative points in the Russian-Georgian relations. The first one is Georgia’s bid for the NATO membership, the second one is Tbilisi’s conflict with the breakaway territories – Abkhazia and South Ossetia. There are also the problems of the bilateral relations.

TEMUR IAKOBASHVILI

It is impossible to settle the conflicts, on which I am working, without Russia’s participation, especially today when the situation has become so strained that the so-called "frozen conflicts" have got "unfrozen".

KONSTANTIN ZATULIN, ALEXANDER KONOVALOV, TATYANA PARKHALINA, OLES DONIY, LEONID KOZHARA, IVAN ZAETS, ANDREW KUCHINS

"Why do the Central and Eastern European countries seek to join NATO? For many of them it is a way to join the EU. Many countries took this as institutionalization of independence from Moscow. For many countries it was a way to return to Europe," Tatyana Parkhalina.

STEPHEN BLANK

In advance of NATO’s Bucharest summit Russia has decided to employ the traditional Soviet tactics of intimidation and blackmail to block NATO’s enlargement.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

The pending recognition of independence of the Serbian province Kosovo by the United Nations and attempts by Russia to apply the “Kosovo precedent” to the conflict zones in the post-Soviet space might reverberate negatively for Georgia.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Initially, the Georgian authorities under plausible pretexts had refrained from filing a suit against Russia. The action was brought to the ECHR only four days before the deadline, which indirectly shows that Tbilisi has been intensely examining that issue.

MERAB PACHULIA

Ambitions of the Georgian authorities to develop cooperation with NATO are largely supported by the population. There is a consensus on the benefits that the country could receive after acquiring membership of the Alliance, though contradictions remain.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Members of the “National Forum” and some other opposition parties fear that Georgia may join NATO without Abkhazia and South Ossetia, thus losing those territories for good.

GHIA NODIA

Abkhazia, an unrecognized republic of Georgia, held December 6 a “national gathering” to express its will to gain independence.

ZAAL ANJAPARIDZE

Now that the Georgian-Russian confrontation is gaining momentum and is approaching the dangerous point, the sides appear to think over in what mode they will continue coexistence.

VLADIMIR ZHARIKHIN

The economic preferences, which some of the CIS countries have due to the Russian authorities’ decision, such as gas delivery at a cut price, etc. have nothing to do with the CIS Charter.  It is a matter of the bilateral relations. 

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

The Georgian minister on conflict settlement, Giorgi Khaindrava, called the recent meeting between the leaders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia a "statehood game." While Georgian officials continue to describe political developments in the breakaway republics in this way, Abkhazia is taking a number of very important political steps that may give its cause a boost.

SERGEI MARKEDONOV

Russia's relations with Georgia are one of the most cute and problematic aspects of foreign policy in the Caucasus. Previously "fraternal," i.e. former Soviet republic, Georgia has become one of Moscow's most intractable partners in the former Soviet space.

The typical criticism of the UK’s Foreign Office is the one eloquently expressed in John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener - that they are pitiless practitioners of real-politik who care more about stability than idealism, and who only really work to protect the interests of British corporations, rather than British values. But on Russia, the Foreign Office seems to have erred on the other side.

By sending troops into Georgia earlier this month, the Kremlin has shown its willingness to use force to check the advance of the West into what it considers Russia's zone of influence. The pretext for the invasion, Georgia's military clampdown on its separatist region of South Ossetia, is irrelevant.

The Russian foreign policy boringly runs around in circles: the row with Estonia on the historic past, the squabbles between Moscow and Kyiv over the Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, the confrontation with Georgia because of its breakaway republics etc. After having made a full circle we are back to square one - another conflict with Georgia.

The Georgian government has apparently been offering olive branches to the Russian government over the last two weeks, with the demotion of hawkish defence minister Irakli Okruashvili to the ministry of economy (he’s since resigned).