Aid agencies mobilized Tuesday to help an estimated 100,000 Georgians displaced by the fighting, as foreigners evacuated from the country flew into Paris with tales of the devastation. French President Nicolas Sarkozy met President Dmitry Medvedev on a high-stake peace mission. “What you are saying is good news,” Sarkozy said after Medvedev informed him that he had ordered an end to Moscow's massive military operation in the neighboring ex-Soviet state. A first flight from the UN's refugee agency landed in Tbilisi airport Tuesday carrying tents, jerry cans, blankets and kitchen equipment, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva. A second was due to fly out from Copenhagen on Wednesday, he added. Combined, that meant an extra 70 tons of supplies for up to 30,000 people, to supplement material already distributed from UNHCR warehouses in Georgia. The International Committee of the Red Cross said a plane with 15 tons of medical supplies and material to support water distribution was due to arrive in Tbilisi Tuesday. ICRC spokeswoman Anna Nelson said they had also been asked to help about 1,500 people in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, western Georgia. The UN World Food Program in Tbilisi said they had distributed food to 2,000 displaced people, but said the numbers arriving in the Georgian capital were rising. In all, nearly 100,000 people had been forced to flee their homes because of the conflict, according to the UNHCR. The figures, supplied by Georgia and Russia, suggested that some 30,000 South Ossetians had moved into North Ossetia, where the UNCHR said it was ready to help the Russian authorities. Another 12,000 displaced were inside South Ossetia itself. Meanwhile, NATO has not altered its position that Georgia will one day join the Alliance, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Tuesday. “Georgia is a respected partner and friend and one day Georgia will join NATO,” he said. “I think that the Bucharest communique stands. That was the situation and that is the situation and that has not changed” despite the current conflict with Russia, he said. At their Bucharest summit in April, NATO member states agreed that neither Georgia nor Ukraine were ready for NATO candidate status but that they could become members of the alliance one day.
