EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Georgia Accuses Russia of Carrying Out "Bombing" Raid

EURASIA INSIGHT

GEORGIA ACCUSES RUSSIA OF CARRYING OUT "BOMBING" RAID
Paul Rimple 8/07/07

In what it claims is the latest attempt in an ongoing campaign to undermine Georgian stability, Tbilisi has accused Russia of being behind an alleged August 6 air attack on Georgian territory near the South Ossetian conflict zone. Russia has categorically denied any involvement in the incident.

The Georgian Ministry of the Interior asserted that the unexploded missile, weighing about 700 kilograms, landed in a vegetable patch at about 7:30 pm on August 6 in the village of Tsitelubani, some 60 kilometers from Tbilisi and several kilometers from the conflict zone.

"I heard an explosion coming from the direction of Tskhinvali," stated Tsitelubani resident Natela Kursraeva, who lives next to the site of impact. "Two to three minutes later, I saw an airplane flying low drop a bomb, but I couldn’t tell what kind of plane it was or where it was from."

Kursraeva says she called the police after witnessing the bombing. One hour later, she said, Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili was at the site with dozens of police and militia.

Shalva Martief, another neighbor also claims hearing an explosion, but says he was unable to verify its origin.

With television cameras filming, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili visited the bomb site August 7 for a debriefing by military personnel, and to hear selected villagers’ eye-witness reports. The Georgian leader, sporting sunglasses and a bright red shirt and white T-shirt that duplicated the colors of the Georgian flag, described the attack as a provocation by Russia that was designed to destabilize Georgia, and, consequently, undermine regional security. He urged accompanying diplomats to make a "strong" response.

Merabishvili told Georgian television that Georgian radar records showed two jets crossing into Georgia via the Kazbegi district from southern Russia, and returning in the same direction. Georgian television news on August 7 displayed reenactments that featured two fighter jets crossing the border, turning west at Gori, seat of the Shida Kartli region, and then dropping a bomb on Tsitelubani before heading back north into Russian territory.

Moscow has strongly denied any involvement in the attack, and alleges that the Georgian government itself could have staged the incident in a bid to undermine a scheduled August 9-10 meeting of the quadripartite Joint Control Commission (JCC), which is the chief vehicle for ongoing South Ossetia peace talks. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Georgia has consistently pushed for change in the negotiating format; aside from Georgia, the talks currently involve Russia, South Ossetia and Russia’s Autonomous Republic of North Ossetia. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"Provocations are being staged every time there is a chance to hold a session of the JCC with an aim to prove [the] ineffectiveness of the existing negotiating and peacekeeping mechanisms wherein the Russian side is involved," the Civil Georgia website quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry statement as saying.

Russian officials disputed the Georgian claim that the raid was carried out by SU-24 (Fencer) attack jets. Instead, officials in Moscow claimed that SU-25 (Frogfoot) fighters were involved. The difference is important, Russian officials noted, because the Georgian air force has access to SU-25s, but not SU-24s. A frustrated Russian Ambassador to Georgia Vyacheslav Kovalenko, interviewed by Georgian television reporters on August 7, claimed that "many countries" in fact hold the SU-series of aircraft.

"I exclude the possibility that this could be from Russia," Kovalenko said in reference to the reported attack. "Because it is not in the interests of Russia!" he snapped, when challenged.

The story, however, is rapidly becoming a whirlwind of counter-accusations about aircraft and flight paths. In response to news of the alleged attack, de facto South Ossetia President Eduard Kokoity claimed that Georgian planes had themselves fired within range of Ossetian villages at 6:20pm on August 6, in a supposed attempt to "scare the Ossetian population . . . and force them to leave their . . . homes," read a statement posted on the breakaway region’s State Committee for Information and the Press website.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry has distributed information packets including photos and air traffic reports to embassies in Tbilisi to back up its allegations. The Georgian government also arranged for foreign diplomats to tour of the bomb site.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, described himself as "deeply concerned about the incident," and urged "all parties to address this serious issue with restraint."

"We are looking at information about the circumstances very carefully and due to its importance, we request the most accurate and urgent report on the facts," Moratinos said in an August 7 statement.

Georgian officials have presented the attack as a sequel to a controversial March 2007 missile strike on the Upper Kodori Gorge, a strip of territory in breakaway Abkhazia held by Georgia and which houses the pro-Tbilisi Abkhaz government-in-exile. Tbilisi blamed Russia for the attack, though a July 12 report issued by the United Nations Observer Mission to Georgia stopped short of assigning explicit blame. Russia was also accused of violating Georgian territory in 2002, when aircraft reportedly dropped bombs in the Pankisi Gorge, a region bordering Chechnya, which sheltered Chechen refugees.

Editor�s Note: Paul Rimple is a freelance reporter based in Tbilisi.

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