Supporters still come, but is it enough?

The flow of high profile officials from different western countries to Georgia continues, with British Foreign Secretary David Milliband scheduled to visit Tbilisi tomorrow.

Milliband’s visit comes after the leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative opposition David Cameron, made a trip to Georgia. The British Foreign Office, however, denies any connection between the two trips.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet came to Georgia on August 15, wearing a shirt bedecked with a Georgian flag to signify his support for the country against Russian troops. The next day, Paet traveled from Tbilisi to Gori along the main highway, observing the situation on the ground. Estonia sent 5 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Georgia on August 12 and vowed to continue working with Georgia to help displaced people from the conflict regions.

The US Senate’s influential Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden was in Tbilisi at the weekend as well. Biden expressed his support for Georgia, but criticized US President George W. Bush for not speaking directly with Moscow. “I applaud the President’s statement [supporting Georgia], but I believe he must make these points directly to Russia’s leaders … President Bush should be speaking regularly and directly to Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev so that there is no misunderstanding of the United States’ position,” Biden said on August 13. The Senator is seen as one of the candidates to be the running mate of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

On August 12, the Presidents of Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia came to Tbilisi to support Georgia as they joined a large rally in front of the Georgian Parliament. “We are turning out to support Georgia, to show that no state has the right to violate the territorial integrity of another. South Ossetia and Abkhazia are part of Georgia,” said Polish President Lech Kaczynski before his visit. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in Tbilisi at the same time, negotiating the ceasefire agreement between Georgia and Russia.

Even thought international statesmen do visit Georgia in these troubled times, there is still doubt over the implementation of one of the ceasefire clauses, that of an international peacekeeping force in the conflict regions. The ceasefire plan, according to its mediator Nicolas Sarkozy, “does not prejudice future arrangements.” Russian President Medvedev, meanwhile, said that secessionist Abkhazia and South Ossetia should be asked their views on the subject. “The problem is that Ossetians and Abkhazians do not have confidence in anyone else except Russia, because the history of the last 15 years shows that the only troops capable of defending their interests are Russian troops,” he said.

At a briefing with US Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice last week, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accused Europe of having a “muted and quiet” reaction to the alleged Russian military build-up after April, when Georgia was denied the Membership Action Plan (MAP) toward NATO membership it was hoping for. “All these [hostilities] could have been prevented; we were screaming, shouting to the world that Russia was going to do it,” Saakashvili said on August 15 as he signed the ceasefire agreement.