Last Updated: Wednesday, 7 July, 2004, 13:04 GMT 14:04 UK
Russia has accused Georgia of provocation after Georgian troops intercepted a Russian convoy headed for the disputed region of South Ossetia.
Two Russian lorries which were carrying military equipment were impounded.
Relations between Georgia and Russia have become increasingly strained over the last few weeks as the situation in breakaway region deteriorates.
Last week, talks between the three sides to try to find a solution to the 12-year conflict broke down.
Georgia's new President, Mikhail Saakashvili, refused to take part in any talks, until South Ossetia released three Georgian officers detained earlier.
'Serious concern'
Russia and Georgia share a peacekeeping role in the South Ossetia region.
Such a large number of arms cannot possibly be used for peacekeeping purposes
Valery Tserodze Georgian interior ministry spokesman The head of the Russian contingent, Maj Gen Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, said the convoy had been stopped by Georgian officials near the South Ossetian village of Kurta late on Tuesday.
Eight of the 10 vehicles were released. The two that were loaded with weapons - including more than 100 missiles - were sent to Tbilisi.
The equipment was destined for a helicopter unit that all three sides considered necessary, Maj Gen Nabzdorov said.
But a Georgian interior ministry spokesman said the large number of weapons on board did not correspond with Russia's peacekeeping duties in the area.
Moscow argued that Georgia had earlier agreed to allow the shipment into the peacekeeping zone.
"Georgia's moves cannot be qualified as anything but a provocation," Russian defence ministry spokesman, Vyacheslav Sedov, said.
Moscow's foreign ministry has expressed "serious concern" over the incident.
Central control
Moscow says it wants to help broker a peaceful solution, but many people in Georgia suspect the Russians of siding with the separatists, says the BBC's Chloe Arnold in Tbilisi.
South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the 1990s, after a war that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It claimed independence from Georgia and wants to join North Ossetia, which is ethnically similar and part of Russia.
President Saakashvili has vowed to bring Georgia's breakaway regions back under central control.
50 million Russians found themselves outside the new Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Any moves that would make immigration to Russia easier would help alleviate Russia’s population problems aggravated by a falling birth rate.
Over and above addressing various discriminatory policies, Russia’s pledge to protect compatriots abroad might have something to do with the South Ossetian and Abkhazian situation in neighboring Georgia.
-Am
Russia pledges to protect compatriots abroad
13:50 2004-07-08 The director of a Russian grammar school in Narva, Estonia, was fired for having insufficient knowledge of Estonian. The Estonian authorities did not seem to be concerned about the fact that all of subjects were taught in Russian at that school.
This instance of discrimination against Russians is cited in a draft resolution on ethnic minorities in Latvia and Estonia, which was submitted for consideration at the 13th session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) being held in Edinburgh this week.
This is the first time that the OSCE will address civil rights violations within the European community rather than somewhere in the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Latvia and Estonia, known for their outrageous attitudes towards ethnic minorities that run counter to European law, were admitted to the European Union and NATO, i.e., to the community of civilised countries. Such an attitude does not only extend to ethnic Russians but to Ukrainians, Belarussians, Jews and Poles, i.e., all Russian speakers.
Close on 500,000 people in Latvia, where ethnic minority groups make nearly 40% of population, have passports with no indication of citizenship and 165,000 people in Estonia are non-residents. Non-residents are subject to flagrant employment discrimination; they cannot be civil servants, policemen or judges; they are denied the right to live in their native language environment; and they are treated as a second-class people.
This is the deliberate discriminatory policy pursued by the Latvian and Estonian governments, rather than individual institutions.
In a recent interview with Argumenty i Fakty, a Russian newspaper, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said: "They have to admit that this is an independent country and become Latvians of Russian decent, not Russians. If they want to be Russians they can go to Russia."
The president thereby denied nearly half of her country's population the right to speak their mother tongue and maintain their traditions and culture. Russian speaking outcasts must evolve into Latvians to obtain Latvian citizenship.
Interestingly, the EU admitted governments that were pursuing such outrageous policies in its democratic club and even, although indirectly, encouraged their policy of ethnic discrimination.
The EU, for example, allowed its member-countries to hold elections to the European Parliament in accordance with their national laws. All residents of Lithuania, including ethnic Russians, were allowed to vote. However, the non-residents of Latvia and Estonia, about 1.5 million people, were not allowed to vote.
Russia was guided by a desire to bring Latvia's and Estonia's national laws in compliance with the relevant United Nations, Council of Europe and OSCE documents as soon as possible when it submitted a draft resolution on ethnic minorities for consideration at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly session in Edinburgh.
However, Russians are having a difficult time in other countries as well. The number of Russians living abroad increased after the largely unnatural disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was not a third wave of immigrants like the 1.5 million of Russians who fled the Bolshevik revolution or the 700,000 displaced people who did not return to the Soviet Union after World War II. This time, the state deserted the 25 million Russians who found themselves outside the new Russia. These people were left to bear hardships on their own without any assistance from their homeland.
The problems of those Russians are very similar to the problems Russian non-residents face in Latvia and Estonia. The Ukrainian authorities, for example, are also closing Russian schools, libraries trying to root out Russian culture in the country. A bus driver could be fired for playing Russian pop music hits on his bus. Russian speakers in Kazakhstan are barred holding positions in state government bodies, even municipal bodies.
Thousands of Russians in Turkmenistan believe it a great luck to be able to assist Turkish construction workers. Turkish workers get $1,200 a month and can afford to hire Russians to do the job for them for $100 a month.
Today, Russians are probably the most divided nationality in the world. While 150 million Russians live relatively decent lives in Russia, according to local standards, 50 million Russians were left outside Russia and many of them pray at night for their mother country to help them.
First Russian President Boris Yeltsin did not understand the acuteness of the problem and said in his free-swinging manner: "If Russians suffer, we will receive all of them in Russia."
However, that rash promise has been translated into reality rather slowly. Around 7 million people, fleeing injustice in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Baltic countries, have immigrated to Russia over the past 10 years. Immigrants virtually took over Moscow, St. Petersburg and southern Russia. However, immigration has stalled because of the lack of a body that can help Russian compatriots resettle in vacant and fertile lands.
Today, the government seems to be making progress in that direction; a special department to manage Russian compatriots was established in the Foreign Ministry a year ago. The Moscow government also finances numerous projects that support Russian speaking communities abroad.
Firms in other countries allocate part of their revenue for aid to compatriots. The Moscow Duma funds the purchase of textbooks for Russian schools abroad. The Mayor's Office provides scholarships to Russian students from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Moscow lawyers provide free legal advice to Russian speakers in Latvia. They help, above all, WWII veterans persecuted by the authorities to the cheers of SS veterans marching along Riga's avenues bearing Nazi swastikas.
Once again, Russia is thinking about its prodigal sons and daughters and is trying to protect them.
Georgian village attacked in breakaway South Ossetia
The Russians of South Ossetia fought and died for their independence once and now they will have to do it all over again.
Have to wait and see if the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline makes it through any conflict.
Ossetia's soldiers take position near village of Pristi
Posted: 11 July 2004 0808 hrs
MOSCOW : A village populated by Georgians in Georgia's breakaway territory of South Ossetia was attacked by grenade launchers and automatic weapons fire, the Interfax news agency reported.
"Unknown assailants opened fire at around 11:30 pm (1930 GMT) towards the village of Tamaracheni" next to the South Ossetian 'capital' Tskhinvali, said a representative of the joint Georgian peace forces -- made up of troops from Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia.
There was no information on any casualties, he added.
A half-hour attack by grenade-launchers destroyed a school building and childrens' playground in the town in the mountainous Caucasus territory, a Georgian police source was quoted as saying by the Ria-Novosti news agency.
South Ossetian separatist leader Robert Kokoity said his militiamen opened fire Saturday on an artillery position near Tamaracheni.
The tiny mountainous province on Georgia's border with Russia has seen a string of clashes in the past week which have increased tensions between Tbilisi, South Ossetia's self-proclaimed government and Russian peacekeepers, who many Georgians suspect of siding with the separatists.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili warned Russia on Saturday not to support separatists in South Ossetia and said he was holding top-level talks with Moscow and Washington to prevent escalating violence in the breakaway Georgian region erupting into armed conflict.
"There is a real danger of large-scale conflict being sparked by a foreign nation," Saakashvili told the national military academy. He warned Russia not to become involved in armed conflict over South Ossetia with Georgia, a former Soviet republic which is openly seeking closer ties with Washington.
South Ossetia fought a bitter three-year battle for independence from Tbilisi with Russian support after the breakup of the Soviet Union and is now effectively a Russian protectorate.
South Ossetia, which has a population of about 70,000, came under trilateral Russian, Georgian and Ossetian control with a 1992 agreement ending the three-year civil war.
Although Georgia pledged in that accord not to use violence or impose sanctions against landlocked South Ossetia, President Saakashvili has vowed to bring South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, back into his fractured former Soviet republic.
Earlier Saturday there was another clash of mortar and automatic arms fire at a Georgian-populated village in South Ossetia.
Three Georgian peacekeepers and a police officer were injured in that violence, two of them seriously.
Kokoity accused the Georgian authorities of boosting the military hardware available for use against the separatists in South Ossetia, including armoured cars and helicopters.
Moscow, which is seeking to prevent its role as regional power broker slipping away to the US, called this week for calm, but said on Friday that it would not tolerate armed intervention in South Ossetia.
The violence further ratcheted up tension following an incident on Thursday when Ossetian separatists briefly took about 40 Georgian soldiers hostage, and Georgian troops impounded two Russian trucks carrying military equipment.
Breakaway Abkhazia Pledges Support for South Ossetia
Supposedly, South Ossetian breakaway government in Tskhinvali will get assistance from unrecognized pro-Russian republics and from a number of «subjects of the Russian Federation» in the North Caucasus.
North Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transdniestria (de-facto independent pro-Russian area near Moldova, Dniester River region), and Stavropol and Kuban Cossacks (Southern Russia) will come to the rescue to help South Ossetia.
-Am
Breakaway Abkhazia Pledges Support for South Ossetia
/ Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 2004-07-13 14:28:09 Valeri Arshba, Vice-President of unrecognized Abkhaz Republic, said that Sukhumi is closely watching developments in Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia and that Abkhazia is ready to render any necessary assistance to Tskhinvali.
“We are not going to remain indifferent towards our South Ossetian brothers. We will help them as we can,” the Abkhaz news agency Apsnypress quoted Valeri Arshba as saying on July 12.
He said that an agreement reached between the authorities of the two unrecognized republics envisions “mutual political, economic and military assistance.”
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