Georgia menaced by armed raids, foreign minister warns
Friday, 28 Nov 2008 09:00
Armed groups persecuting Georgian civilians. Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
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Georgian civilians are coming under regular attack from armed groups emerging from South Ossetia and Abkhazia, according to the country's foreign minister.
Eka Tkeshelashvili told an audience at the International Institute of Strategic Studies earlier this week that a "dangerous pattern is developing" in the two separatist provinces.
Control of South Ossetia, a breakaway province in Georgia, was lost to Russian forces when they invaded to protect secessionist fighters in August.
Large troop numbers remain in the region, Ms Tkeshelashvili claimed, before saying their presence "40km from the capital… with no restraining measures whatsoever" represented a major security threat for her government.
"The quantity of the presence and the nature of the occupation is now overwhelming and is in the heart of the country, in a way," she said.
"Until this situation is continued… it will be very, very superficial to have an understanding that security is arranged on the ground."
Ms Tkeshelashvili dismissed Russian claims that Georgians have committed war crimes by pointing to the presence of international monitors on Georgian territory.
In the breakaway provinces, however, she pointed out that there is no "independent eye to see what is actually happening" and pointed to incidents spilling across Georgia's internal borders as evidence of the internal situation.
Ms Tkeshelashvili said groups of armed men were emerging from South Ossetia and Abkhazia and looting and kidnapping local civilians.
She added that landmines had been laid in Georgian villages close to the border and said that "de-miners" could not be sent in to deal with them because they were coming under enemy fire.
"If Russia is still in the mind of furthering the agenda it had when it invaded Georgia, there is nothing that can restrain Georgia," she added.
She claimed Russia maintains its "own version" of the ceasefire agreement and said Georgian forces were responding to Russian aggression at the start of the August conflict.
A report published by human rights group Amnesty International earlier this month found 20,000 ethnic Georgians are yet to return to their homes for fear of violence against them.