GEORGIA: Georgia warned yesterday that there was a "real danger of war" in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, after two Georgian peacekeepers were shot dead as a short-lived ceasefire crumbled. Daniel McLaughlin, in Moscow, reports
Separatist troops in South Ossetia accused Georgian soldiers of opening fire and attacking villages in the province, which won de facto independence from Tbilisi in 1992 and is patrolled by hundreds of peacekeepers from Georgia, South Ossetia and northern neighbour Russia.
Georgia claims that Moscow is supporting and supplying guns to the secessionist regime in South Ossetia, and its parliament backed a resolution last week demanding the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the region.
"We are not going to give up. If continues we will answer them in the way we did yesterday. But we are doing everything we can to avoid starting a war," Georgian Defence Minister Mr Georgy Baramidze said after a ceasefire collapsed after just a few hours.
Georgia's Interior Ministry claimed its troops had killed at least 15 Ossetian soldiers, but the region's leadership denied the claim and accused Tbilisi of sparking renewed fighting.
"The Georgians were shooting at Ossetian peacekeepers' positions. Three of our soldiers are wounded," said spokeswoman Ms Irina Gagloyeva.
Mr Baramidze admitted to launching "heavy fire" at South Ossetian positions, and Russian news agencies said villages close to the provincial capital Tskhinvali had come under artillery bombardment for the first time in two months of sporadic fighting.
Tension has grown steadily since Georgia's president, Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, won a landslide election victory in January on a promise to crush corruption and re-unite a country that was fractured by civil war after the Soviet Union collapsed.
He has already ousted the renegade leader of the Adzharia province, and has pledged to bring separatist South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under Tbilisi's sway.
Mr Saakashvili, a US-educated lawyer, has accused Russia of propping up regimes in both regions in an effort to maintain influence in Georgia, which has stated its ambition of ultimately joining NATO and the European Union.
Moscow is irked by Washington's increasingly warm relationship with Georgia, where a US-funded pipeline will help bring Caspian Sea oil to Western markets and US officers have trained government troops in anti-terror tactics.
Georgia's prime minister, Mr Zurab Zhvania, called for an international conference on the future of South Ossetia and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to step up its role.
"We urge the whole world to get involved in solving this problem," Mr Zhvania said yesterday.