|
Wednesday, 31.10.2007
Caucasus Crisis: Saakashvili vs. Russian peacekeepers
Tbilisi. New low in Russia-Georgian relations: After a skirmish between Russian UN peacekeepers and Georgian policemen, President Saakashvili is threatening to expel the peacekeepers from Georgia.
|
|
Russian media reported that Russian UN peacekeepers were monitoring the situation in Sudidi district near the border to the separatist republic of Abkhazia. Besides monitoring the cease-fire, the unit were also looking for signs of cattle disease that had broken out, said Alexander Dijordiev, attaché to the general of the CIS peacekeepers.
|
Version 1: Threat to shoot the Russian soldiers
|
He said the patrol was stopped by Georgian police and threatened. “An unidentified representative of the Georgian Interior Ministry threatened to set fire to the personnel transporter and shoot the Russian recruits,“ writes the Internet edition newsru.
|
When he tried to put up resistance, he and the other four in his patrol were disarmed and arrested.
|
Version 2: Provokation by Russian soldiers
|
The Georgian side portrayed the incident differently. According to this account, the UN peacekeepers tried to surround a “patriotic” Georgian youth camp. Georgian policemen guarding the camp were beaten.
|
“The Russian military are not entitled to surround the territory of a patriotic camp with personnel carriers. Around seven vehicles appearred, clearly a provocation. They took three of our policemen hostage,” claimed the commander of the Georgian peacekeepers Demur Pashtiyani.
|
Saakashvili threatens expulsion and to open fire
|
Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili lost no time in responding to the attack. He flew to the crisis area with a special forces unit that fired in the air over the UN peacekeepers. They pulled back. Saakshvili then appeared on television to demand that the commander of the Russian troops, Sergei Chaban, pull out of Georgia. He threatened to open fire the next time such an incident recurred. “And we have real weapons. You know that,” he added.
|
This is not the first conflict between UN peacekeepers and Georgian units. There have been a number of skirmishes in the past related to the separatist republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that have declared themselves independent. Georgia has accused Russia of supporting the separatist movements.
|
The Okruashvili scandal – Georgia’s ex-defence minister as witness for the prosecution?
|
Georgia’s former defence minister Irakli Okruashvili – who used to be Saakashvili’s close associate and a hardliner on the separatist conflicts – recently publicly accused Saakashvili, among other things, of planning a violent annexation of South Ossetia. The next day he was arrested.
|
Under interrogation he retracted his allegations and admitted he was guilty of corruption. Opposition politicians said his statements had been elicited under duress, and criticised a clamp down on democracy and freedom of opinion in Georgia. Okruashvili fled the country on being released on bail.
(ab/.rufo/Moscow)
|
|
