MOSCOW, Nov. 1--Georgia’s foreign minister on Wednesday said the Georgia-Russia crisis was “surmountable“ ahead of a meeting with his Russian counterpart to try to resolve a diplomatic conflict between the two countries.
“The current difficulties are surmountable,“ Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said, news agency Interfax reported.
“There have been tensions, but they can be resolved.“
Accusations have continued to fly from all sides in recent days, however, giving little indication of an imminent breakthrough in the crisis, which exploded last month.
“We need to establish normal relations and to eliminate the stereotypes and pressure tactics that are being used,“ Bezhuashvili said.
Russia has cut off transport ties, deported hundreds of Georgian citizens, and cracked down on Georgian-owned businesses in the crisis.
The Georgian minister sat at a table with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and other foreign ministers from the region as the two-day Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization summit opened Wednesday morning.
Bezhuashvili and Lavrov were due to hold separate bilateral talks later in the day in the first high-level contact between the two governments since the crisis began.
A Kremlin source told the Interfax news agency that a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bezhuashvili was considered on the eve of his arrival, but ultimately rejected.
“We always welcome any dialogue... but a single contact will not solve the problem,“ said Igor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s security council, who is also due to meet Bezhuashvili.
He said the success of the talks would depend on what Georgia brought to the table, saying it was up to Tbilisi to solve a crisis it had caused.

A general view of the opening ceremony of the Sixth International Conference on New or Restored Democracies in Doha, Oct. 29. (Reuters Photo)

DOHA, Qatar, Nov. 1--A Qatari proposal to set up a permanent office to follow up the recommendations of a UN-sponsored conference on democracy was met Tuesday by reservations from Western countries.
A senior Western diplomat said “not every one was convinced of the Qatari project“, and “countries like the United States and Russia expressed reservations because they want to explore the aims of the proposed office and forms of its funding.
“The funding of this office would raise a problem, mainly due to the presence of other (follow-up) mechanisms like the (UN) Democracy Fund, which was founded in 2005, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),“ he told AFP.
The sixth edition of the UN “New and Restored Democracies“ conference is being hosted by gas-rich Qatar. Ironically, the small Gulf emirate did not even have a constitution until last year, its legislative council is still named by the emir and political parties are banned.
Qatar’s undersecretary of foreign affairs, Mohammed Al-Rumaihi, said on the conference sidelines that “a number of countries expressed reservations over the idea, fearing the presence of a new
pressure group within the United Nations.“
He said the emirate’s proposal is “a follow-up mechanism ... comprising the current and past presidencies of the conference, with an equal representation across the continents of civil society and parliamentarians.“
One participant, who asked not to be named, said some Western countries, including the United States, do not wish to see non-governmental organizations (NGOs) represented within the proposed mechanisms.
An Arab human rights activist said the same thing.
“Some governments want to impose on us those who would represent us in this follow-up mechanism, while we prefer to elect our own representatives,“ said Haitham Manaa, the head of the Paris-based Arab Human Rights Organization.
This year’s conference, which concludes Wednesday, is expected to adopt a “Doha Declaration“ and a plan of action for the coming three years.
The conference was launched in Manila in 1988. It was last held in Mongolia in 2003.

CAIRO, Egypt,
Nov. 1--Israel and Denmark are Egypt’s worst enemies, according to a poll measuring Egyptian attitudes to various countries published this week by a government body.
The study conducted by the cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center, which questioned a random sample of 1,000 Egyptians over the age of 18, found that 92 percent consider Israel an enemy despite a peace deal signed in 1979 by both countries, AFP reported.
Only two percent of Egyptians interviewed considered Israel a “friend“.
Over 60 percent of Egyptians also consider Denmark an enemy, after caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were published in a Danish newspaper in 2005 sparking anger, and sometimes violence, across the Muslim World. Egypt’s population is 90 percent Muslim.
Egypt’s third enemy is the United States, according to over 50 percent of those interviewed for the poll.
On the other hand, Egypt’s closest friend is considered by 92 percent of respondents to be Saudi Arabia, followed closely by Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan and Syria. The cabinet body interviewed people by phone between August 31 and September 3, 2006.

Forensic police inspect the spot where Adriano Cirillo and Pasquale Pecoraro, two known members of a local clan, were fatally shot as they rode a moped in Torre del Greco, 17 kilometers (11 miles) south of Naples, Italy, Oct. 31. (AFP Photo)

ROME, Nov. 1--Italy said Tuesday it would beef up security in Naples by adding 1,000 patrol officers and surveillance cameras amid an upsurge of slayings around a city already known for street violence and organized crime.
Authorities also were considering deploying soldiers in Naples, where seven people have been killed since Friday in separate incidents, AP reported.
In the latest case, a 36-year-old man was shot and killed in his computer games store about 8 miles north of Naples, the Carabinieri paramilitary police said. He did not have a criminal record, and police said it was too soon to discuss a motive.
“We must radically and permanently revisit the way we defend the safety of our citizens,“ Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said in a statement. “We want a true change of direction: so for the first time we are betting everything on permanent measures, not temporary ones.“
Amato said he would put 1,000 more police officers on the streets and have surveillance cameras installed throughout the city starting Nov. 9. Naples has about 13,000 police officers, the Interior Ministry said, but it is unclear how many of those have desk jobs.
Also Tuesday, Premier Romano Prodi said the government was considering the deployment of army troops to Naples.
Italy in the past has deployed soldiers to deal with the Mafia or spikes in violence, including in the Naples area. Soldiers were sent to Sicily in 1992--the year the Mafia killed the two top anti-mob prosecutors in Palermo--and they remained on the island for six years.
Typically, soldiers guard public buildings to free up police to combat organized crime.
The Camorra, the equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia for the Naples area, controls drug and arms trafficking, prostitution, extortion and illegal betting rackets.

LONDON, Nov. 1--British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government survived a potentially damaging vote in parliament Tuesday on whether he should order an inquiry into how Britain joined the war in Iraq.
Opposition parties had demanded an immediate investigation by a committee of senior members of parliament into the government’s handling of the build-up to the US-led March 2003 invasion, AFP reported.
However, the motion, proposed by the small Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties in the lower House of Commons, was defeated by 298 votes to 273, with Blair’s 62-seat working majority cut to 25.
The government later promised an inquiry once the situation permitted.
A dozen rebels from Blair’s ruling Labour Party, largely drawn from a group known as “the usual suspects“, voted against the government although other lawmakers who have previously shown dissent over Iraq fell into line.
Blair is seen by some as a lame duck after pledging to step down by September 2007 and a parliamentary defeat would have further weakened his authority and could even have hastened his departure.
In a stormy debate before the vote, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said a defeat would signal uncertainty and endanger Britain’s 7,000 troops in war-ravaged Iraq.
“We are at what could potentially be a turning point in Iraq,“ she told MPs, adding it was not the time “to rehash all the debates and all the arguments that have been had over and over again“.
But Beckett hinted that the government may hold an inquiry at some point in the future.
The Defence Secretary Des Browne went one further, saying the government would hold a “retrospective inquiry“ into the Iraq war, telling the BBC: “When the time is right, of course there will be such an inquiry.“

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Nov. 1--The late apartheid-era leader P.W. Botha should be remembered for paving the way to the end of whites-only rule, former South African president Nelson Mandela said Wednesday.
“While to many Mr Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country,“ Mandela said in a statement, AFP reported.
Botha, who ruled South Africa from 1978 to 1989, defied massive international pressure to release Mandela from prison but did initiate contacts with the deputy leader of the African National Congress which was outlawed at the time.
Mandela was only released by Botha’s successor F.W. de Klerk and then won the country’s first multi-racial elections in 1994.