Georgia: Uranium Smuggling Highlights Border Security Concerns

The arrest of a Russian citizen attempting to smuggle highly enriched uranium into Georgia has fueled concerns about the border security of the country's breakaway region of South Ossetia, where Georgian undercover agents made contact with the smuggler. However, in interviews with EurasiaNet, Georgian government officials now specify that the materials were not brought into Georgia via South Ossetia, but via an ordinary Georgian border station. The clarification raises questions about Georgia's own border security.

Georgian Interior Ministry spokesperson Shota Utiashvili stated that while Georgian undercover agents started their sting operation in Tskhinvali, capital of South Ossetia, the enriched uranium actually entered Georgia through a border checkpoint near Kazbegi, a remote mountain town in eastern Georgia.

Oleg Khintsagov, a Russian citizen, was arrested in January 2006 in Tbilisi while attempting to sell bomb-grade uranium to Georgian agents. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Khintsagov was tried in September 2006 in Kazbegi for smuggling "illegal substances" into Georgia and sentenced to eight years in a Georgian prison. An appeal is scheduled to be heard on March 5, according to the Tbilisi Court of Appeals. The hearing is closed to the public.

"We arrested him for uranium brought in through Kazbegi," Utiashvili told EurasiaNet. Although Utiashvili noted that he does not rule out the possibility of uranium being smuggled into Georgia through South Ossetia, Khintsagov is not known to have brought the goods into the breakaway region itself, he said.

Since news of Khintsagov's arrest was released in January, the Georgian government has linked the case with the security risks posed by the uncontrolled borders and undefined status of the country's two conflict zones, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive]. In a January 25 statement, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs asserted that the case testified to the need to install international monitors along the Russian border with the two territories. "The trafficking of illicit goods through these borders and into these territories is rampant," reads an English-language translation of the statement posted on the Civil.ge news bulletin site.

In effect, though, the fact that Khintsagov was able to cross into Georgia at a standard border check point with a plastic bag of highly enriched uranium raises questions about the security of Georgian borders outside of the two disputed territories. Utiashvili states that border guards at Kazbegi had been notified in advance about Khintsagov's trip and about what he was likely to be carrying. The Russian had been "forced" to travel to Tbilisi to make his sale, he added, after agents told Khintsagov that the prospective buyer of the uranium did not want to travel with $1 million to Vladikavkaz, capital of the Russian autonomous republic of North Ossetia, where Khintsagov had first proposed a meeting.

The Georgian Border Patrol has declined to comment on the case.

The border crossing that Khintsagov used is equipped with gamma mobile monitors provided by the United States' Georgian Border Security and Law Enforcement program. An informed source stated that the monitors are capable of detecting highly enriched uranium. Nuclear researchers, however, state that highly enriched uranium's low level of radiation makes it difficult to detect the material using just gamma-ray technology.

New, more advanced gamma neutron monitors are expected to soon be installed at the Georgian border under the U.S. Department of Energy's Second Line of Defense program.

However, Georgian National Security Council Secretary Konstantin Kemularia notes that even with perfect equipment, smuggled goods can still pass through the border.

"It is very hard to say that only technical hardware can help," Kemularia said in an interview with EurasiaNet. "If there are high levels of bribes, in the end you can turn off the technical equipment. Second, the equipment perhaps does not work -- or works poorly."

Only when Georgian border guards are able to make use of computers and "everything else" used by "international terrorists," he said, "will we reach effectiveness." As a move in that direction, Georgia's 2007 budget allocates some 50 million lari (over $29.2 million) to border protection -- more than double what the government has spent in the past, Kemularia said.

Nonetheless, as have other Georgian officials, Kemularia emphasized that the real problem area for Georgia's border security are the country's two breakaway regions. South Ossetia, in particular, is attractive to smugglers, he claimed, adding that the Georgian and American governments are currently investigating a dollar counterfeiting operation allegedly based in Tskhinvali.

"Why do international criminals choose this path? Because specifically that territory, the former autonomous republic of Georgia, South Ossetia, is an uncontrolled territory," he said. "There, one can do whatever he or she wants."

Blame for the situation in South Ossetia falls squarely on Russia, he continued. "Russia should feel responsibility before the international community. They can deny everything, but the fact is that there are cases which are proved."

So far, however, the international response to Georgia's appeals to replace Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia has been restrained. At a February 26 joint press conference with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Brussels, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, stated that the European Union is "ready to help, to participate in all necessary missions, as long as those missions have a clear objective, an objective that can be achieved."

Already, however, the arrest appears to have accelerated efforts to secure Georgia's borders. On February 2, the US and Georgia signed an agreement to fight nuclear smuggling by providing assistance for border surveillance, enhancing ties with the international community on nuclear forensics and reinforcing the work of the Georgian Nuclear Regulation Agency. The first American delegation to come to Georgia to explore ways of improving the country's defenses against nuclear smuggling arrived in mid-September 2006, a few weeks after Khintsagov's trial.

Other international programs also exist. The United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency has supplied handheld radiation detectors and installed vehicle and pedestrian monitors to detect nuclear or radioactive material entering the Black Sea port city of Poti, an official at the agency's headquarters in Vienna said. The National Security Council has also worked with the European Commission to increase border guards' salaries and upgrade communication systems to facilitate information exchanges between security agencies, according to Kemularia.

But one former Georgian foreign minister noted that while Georgia's border security has "room for improvement," much depends on the goodwill of the country's neighbors. The border between Georgia and Turkey is mountainous and hard to protect, commented Irakli Menagarishvili, director of the Strategic Research Center in Tbilisi, but since the two countries cooperate, the level of success in warding off smugglers is much higher. "In the north, unfortunately, [there is] much less willingness to cooperate," he said in reference to Russia. "That is why we need to double our efforts."

The Russian government has claimed that Georgia rebuffed its attempts at a joint investigation of the uranium smuggling case. Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, however, has stated that Tbilisi never received a reply when it contacted Russian security agencies about the seized uranium samples.

The de facto governments of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have denied the accusation that their territories are used for smuggling and counterfeiting operations.