Only Russia and Nicaragua recognize the independence of South Ossetia.

Georgia is swiftly rearming with the aim of waging a new military conflict, Russia’s deputy chief of staff said Wednesday, amid rising tensions ahead of the anniversary of the states’ August 2008 war.
“We clearly see that Georgia is rearming to previous levels and higher“ than before the 2008 conflict, deputy chief of staff General Anatoly Nogovitsin told reporters.
“Experience shows that if it is rearming it is doing so only for the purpose of aggression,“ he said.
“If there is an aggression, I can tell you that our response will be adequate. As a military man, I can tell you that we are closely monitoring the situation,“ he added.
He acknowledged however there was no evidence of any imminent action. “We do not see any threat beyond these continuous provocations“ from the Georgian side, he said.

Military Equipment
Russia has repeatedly accused the West, led by the United States, of helping Georgia re-equip its military after the armed forces’ weaponry was severely depleted in the August conflict.
“The most worrying question is that Georgia is being rearmed,“ said Nogovitsin.
Georgian National Security Council Secretary Eka Tkeshelashvili described the comments as “ridiculous“, saying a revamp of Georgia’s armed forces was aimed at fulfilling its stated goal of winning NATO membership.
Russia’s statements are aimed at “creating this myth of Georgia’s aggression and aggressive re-armament,“ she told reporters in Tbilisi.
“Georgia is concentrated very fundamentally on reforming its military forces in a way that will bring them in full compliance with NATO standards,“ she added.
Tensions have been rising in recent days between the ex-Soviet states as they prepare to mark the one-year anniversary on August 7 of the outbreak of their five-day war over breakaway South Ossetia.
Russia has warned it will hit back if the Georgian provocations continue. Georgia has however denied any violations of the ceasefire and in turn accused Russia of breaking the truce.

US Consultations
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday spoke with President Barack Obama about Georgia, just days before the anniversary of last year’s Russia-Georgia war, a Kremlin statement said.
The two leaders shared a telephone conversation at Moscow’s initiative, the statement said, adding they also discussed arms control, the Middle East and Iran.
“An exchange on opinions on the lessons of last year’s Georgian crisis took place,“ the statement said, without elaborating.
Tension is mounting with the anniversary approaching. Georgia and Russia blame each other for recent provocations over the separatist-held, Moscow-friendly South Ossetia region of Georgia.
Russian troops have been put on increased combat readiness on South Ossetia’s de facto border with Georgia, officials said Tuesday.
On the night of Aug. 7-8, 2008, a brief war broke out over the region. Thousands of Russian troops poured into South Ossetia to beef up security after the Russian army routed the Georgian military in the five-day conflict.
Only Russia and Nicaragua recognize the independence of South Ossetia, and President Barack Obama said during a recent Moscow summit that Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.

Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission on Wednesday filed charges against former premier Khaleda Zia and her eldest son for allegedly embezzling money meant for an orphanage, officials said.
Zia and her son Tareque Rahman were accused of “gobbling up“ 21 million taka (305,000 dollars) donated to an orphanage trust named after Zia’s husband, the late president Ziaur Rahman, a senior commission official told AFP.
This is the first case to be filed against Zia since her bitter political rival, the current prime minister Sheikh Hasina, stormed back to power in December 29 elections.
“We investigated the case and found that Tareque Rahman and her mother gobbled up the money meant for the Zia Orphanage Trust. They did it with help from the then principal secretary of the premier,“ said the official, who declined to be identified.
The orphanage was never built and the money was siphoned off through Zia and Rahman’s aides, he alleged.
Zia who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is a two-time former premier. Her party was crushed in the last parliamentary elections by Hasina’s Awami League party.

The new head of NATO was in Afghanistan on Wednesday to assess alliance efforts in the fight against insurgents, making a surprise visit on only his third day in office, a NATO official said.
“He is here,“ a press officer for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told AFP in reference to former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who took charge of the 28-nation alliance on Monday, AFP reported.
“He is touring the facilities and he is meeting with top officials,“ said the spokesman, Lieutenant Robert Carr.
Rasmussen took office in Brussels pledging to prevent Afghanistan from once more becoming the hub of international terrorism as he laid out his priorities at a time when NATO is embroiled in its biggest ever mission.
The new secretary-general was due to meet President Hamid Karzai Wednesday, one Afghan official said.
The NATO chief was also scheduled to meet three other leading candidates for landmark presidential elections on August 20 on Thursday.
ISAF is made up of around 65,000 troops from 42 countries playing a key role, alongside a US-led coalition, in helping Afghanistan to fight a Taliban-led insurgency that has reached record levels this year.

Eight suspected militants were killed in gunbattles when they tried to pass into Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani side amid an upsurge in rebel violence in the region, India’s army said on Wednesday.
The first clash erupted on Tuesday after soldiers surrounded a group of heavily armed militants in Tangdhar sector near the Line of Control (LoC), a ceasefire line that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, Reuters reported.
“The encounters are raging along LoC at three places,“ said an Indian army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel J. S. Brar.
In a separate firefight, a senior member of Kashmir’s largest militant group Hizbul Mujahideen was shot dead by troops in Doda district of south Kashmir, police said.
After a relative calm, there has been a sudden rise since the weekend in separatist violence across Kashmir--the focal point of two wars between India and Pakistan since partition in 1947.
Indian security officials say a two-decade-old armed revolt against New Delhi’s rule may not end in India’s part of Kashmir unless Pakistan stops arming, training and sending militants to the region.

Pakistani Christians staged a protest Wednesday over the killing of eight of their community members by a Muslim mob, with some demonstrators smashing the windows of public buses.
According to AP, television footage showed dozens of protesters in the eastern city of Lahore climbing onto the vehicles and breaking their windows.
Ijaz Sindhu, chairman of the organizing group, the Pakistan Christian Labor Party, said some young people who broke away from the main crowd attacked four buses but caused no injuries to fleeing passengers.
Hundreds of Muslims attacked a Christian neighborhood in Gojra city on Saturday after reports that a Quran had been desecrated. Eight Christians were killed.
Authorities say an initial probe debunked the claims that the Muslim holy book was defiled, and government officials have said members of the banned Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and its Al-Qaeda-linked offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were arrested as suspects in the attacks.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said its fact-finding team has determined that the rioting had been planned and was not spontaneous. It said hard-line clerics made incendiary speeches.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Kenya’s government on Wednesday it must quickly implement long-delayed reforms and that corruption, impunity and human rights abuses were holding the country back.
Carrying a personal message from US President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan, Clinton said she told President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga they must work harder to fully implement a power-sharing deal that ended bloodletting after a disputed December 2007 election, Reuters reported.
“The absence of strong, effective democratic institutions has permitted ongoing corruption, impunity, politically motivated violence, human rights abuses and a lack of respect for the rule of law,“ she said in unusually harsh language.
“These conditions helped fuel the post-election violence and they are continuing to hold Kenya back,“ said Clinton, who is in Nairobi for a US trade conference with sub-Saharan African countries.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula said his government was doing everything it could and it was important for nations to talk to each other candidly.
“President Kibaki and his team assured the Secretary of State that reforms are on course and that the war against impunity in the country is on, that a war against corruption is on,“ said Wetangula at the joint news conference with Clinton.
“All sanctuaries of corruption will be destroyed to make Kenya a cleaner and safer place to do business,“ he promised.
Last month, Kenya was ranked by Transparency International as east Africa’s most graft-prone nation, with a bribe expected or solicited in nearly half of all transactions.