Georgians, separatists exchange fire in Ossetia 01 Aug 2004 10:56:26 GMT
By Margarita Antidze
TBILISI, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Georgian troops and separatists clashed overnight in the rebel South Ossetia region, the Russian peacekeeping force said on Sunday, blaming Tbilisi for stoking up tempers in the province it wants to regain.
Tension has been rising in the mountainous region, which has enjoyed 12 years of de facto independence from ex-Soviet Georgia, since President Mikhail Saakashvili was elected in January. He has promised to secure Georgian control over lost provinces.
The overnight clashes in the region on the Russian border were the second in three days, following heavy fire on Friday morning, which the South Ossetian government said was a prelude to a Georgian attack.
Ossetian and Georgian battalions, both theoretically part of a three-sided peacekeeping force set up after a 1991-2 war in the region, fired on each other several times.
"Yesterday firing was provoked between two parts of the peacekeeping forces," Major-General Svyatoslav Nabzdorov told Russia's NTV television.
"The firing went on overnight and in the morning. Today a group of military observers will discover the cause," he said, adding that Georgia was provoking the clashes.
"They are deliberately provoking everything. They want to show that the peacekeepers cannot manage the situation."
Georgia and Russia have traded accusations over South Ossetia, with Tbilisi blaming Moscow for backing and arming the rebel government. On Friday, Russia said Georgian officials calling for an attack on the region were "playing with fire".
Russia has called for urgent crisis talks to defuse the mounting tension, and warned Georgia that it could not be indifferent to clashes that could undermine the stability of its own Caucasus provinces.
A South Ossetian government spokesman said Georgian forces had opened fire first, but Georgia said troops had returned fire after coming under attack.
"We were forced to return fire. Some of our side were wounded," said a source at Georgia's security ministry. Nabzdorov said Georgian officials were refusing to pull back from a road linking ethnic Georgian villages to Georgia.
Since Saakashvili came to power after a revolution last November, he has promised to make Georgia a prosperous state with control over all of its territory.
He has already forced out the leader of wayward Adzhara, and now focuses on South Ossetia and the Black Sea Abkhazia region.
Western governments have urged restraint, and analysts say there are concerns that unrest could delay construction of a major oil export pipeline that transits the country.
(Additional reporting by Tanya Mosolova in Moscow)
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