Georgia opposition to protest against memorial dismantlement.

TBILISI, December 21 (Itar-Tass) - Leaders and activists of Georgia's
main opposition parties will stage in Kutaisi on Monday peaceful protest
against the dismantlement of the memorial Martial Glory in Kutaisi.

Leaders of main opposition parties will arrive from Tbilisi. On
Sunday, representatives of Kutaisi offices of opposition parties urged the
Georgian president "not to limit himself to dismissing Governor of the
Imereti Territory (Kutaisi is the territorial administration centre)
Mikhail Chogovadze, but to call to responsibility executives of
territorial agencies of law enforcement bodies who were duty-bound to
ensure security of people".
Georgian opposition parties denounced actions by authorities on
dismantling the memorial Martial Glory in Kutaisi and blasting its main
part, which resulted in the death of two people. Reinforced concrete
fragments of the memorial dropped on a woman and her eight-year-old
daughter who stood 300 metres away from the memorial.
Leaders of some opposition parties urged the Georgian authorities "to
reconsider the earlier decision to erect a parliament building at the
place of the memorial, but instead build there an Orthodox church in
memory of those killed in Great Patriotic War".
The leaders of the party Christian Democratic Movement visited Kutaisi
on Sunday at the place of the dismantled memorial and expressed
condolences to the kith and kin of the deceased. David Gamkrelidze, the
leader of the New Rightists Party and former presidential candidate at the
elections on January 5, 2008, made a call to build a church at the place
of the exploded memorial. He called "a sacrilege" an idea of erecting a
parliament building at the place of the tragedy.
The demolition of a war memorial in Georgia is an "act of state
vandalism" that "insults the feelings of any civilised person", the
Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
"Public protests in the country and the indignation of Georgian
veterans were ignored. Moreover, challenged was the whole international
community that adopted a resolution at the U.N. General Assembly just
yesterday in which it expressed concern over continuous attempts to defile
or vandalise monuments built in memory of those who fought against Nazism
during World War II," the ministry said.
"The blasphemy in Kutaisi is yet another shameful doing of the
incumbent Tbilisi leadership in its maniacal desire to erase the
historical memory of its own people," the ministry said.
Federation Council chairman Sergei Mironov also condemned the
decision to dismantle the war memorial in Kutaisi as blasphemous and
regrettable.
"This is sad and regrettable news," he said, commenting on the
Georgian authorities decision to construct a new parliament building in
the place where the war memorial stands.
He believes it is "blasphemous" to do so by demolishing a monument to
whose who made the very existence of the country possible.

.Agreement reached at climate conference is progress - Danish PM.
COPENHAGEN, December 21 (Itar-Tass) - Danish Prime Minister Lars
Loekke Rasmussen believes that the agreement reached at the U.N. Climate
Conference is better than nothing.
The prime minister told it TV 2 television on Sunday. He chaired the
forum that took place in Copenhagen on December 7 to 19. He said the
agreement would have been better if it had been approved at a plenary
session, but still it marked progress.
The document involves 26 countries, which account for 75 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions. It recognizes the need to limit global warming
to two degrees Celsius and creates financial conditions in short- and
mid-term prospects to help poor countries adjust to climate changes.
He said the summit had managed to bring together at the negotiating
table the USA, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Europe and poor
countries. The agreement would not have been reached without the
interference of heads of state, as prior to their arrival participants in
the talks had been in the deadlock, at the zero point.
The overwhelming majority of Danish and foreign observers qualify
success of the Copenhagen summit as rather modest and even see the summit
as a failure.
Despite the participation of heads of state and government from 119
countries, its participants failed to approve a final agreement, but only
took it into consideration. The document does not include commitments of
countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and terms for the approval of
a legally binding agreement.
-0-zhe/