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NEWS BRIEFS
10/28/09
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Georgian parliamentary minority leader Giorgi Targamadze is calling for an international fact-finding initiative to discredit Russian accusations that Tbilisi cooperated with al Qaeda on operations designed to destabilize Russia’s North Caucasus.
Russian Federal Security Services chief Alexander Bortnikov alleged earlier in October that Tbilisi "in cooperation with al Qaeda" is sending fighters and ammunition to Russia’s restive republics of Chechnya and Dagestan.
Tbilisi vehemently denied the allegations. Even so, the allegation has sparked concerns about a return to the situation in 2002, when Russia used terrorism allegations as grounds to launch attacks in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, an area then being used as a safe haven by Chechen militants. The gorge borders on Chechnya.
Georgian officials assert that the area has long since lost any connection to Chechen fighters and to terrorism in general. Targamadze, head of the Christian Democrat Party and a former journalist, expressed concern that Moscow might use the al Qaeda cooperation accusation as grounds to attack Georgia, according to a report broadcast on Imedi television October 27.
Posted October 28, 2009 © Eurasianet
http://www.eurasianet.org
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The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website,
meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed
debate about the social, political and economic
developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
It is a program of the Open Society
Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New
York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation
that promotes the development of open societies around
the world by supporting educational, social, and legal
reform, and by encouraging alternative
approaches to complex and controversial issues.
The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily
represent the position of the Open Society Institute and
are the sole responsibility of the author or
authors.
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