Prague - A group of European intellectuals and former politicians, including former Czech president Vaclav Havel, urged Europe on Tuesday to back Georgia in its territorial conflict with Russia. The signatories, including French philosophers Bernard-Henri Levy and Andre Glucksmann, made the call in an open letter as a European Union commission prepares to issue its report on who is to blame for the August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia.
"We urge the EU's 27 democratic leaders to define a proactive strategy to help Georgia peacefully regain its territorial integrity and obtain the withdrawal of Russian forces illegally stationed on Georgian soil," they said in a letter published by several European newspapers, including The Guardian and the Czech daily Mlada Fronta Dnes.
They warned that 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, "a new wall is being built in Europe - this time across the sovereign territory of Georgia."
"It would be utterly disastrous if we were to appear in any way to condone the kind of practices that plunged our continent into war and division for most of the last century," the authors said.
