GEORGIA: Georgia accused pro-Russian forces in a breakaway region of planning ethnic cleansing and sparking a potential humanitarian crisis, as Moscow warned that sporadic fighting in the Caucasus nation could soon spiral into civil war, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
Four Georgian soldiers were killed and more than a dozen civilians injured when gun and mortar fire erupted in separatist South Ossetia, a mostly Russian region that broke free of Tbilisi's rule in a conflict that killed thousands of people in the early 1990s.
President Mikhail Saakashvili, a young firebrand who swept to power in Georgia's "Rose Revolution" last November, has pledged to bring South Ossetia back under his control, and accuses Moscow of providing the province's pro-Kremlin regime with finance and weapons under the cover of a peacekeeping operation.
"We must not allow ethnic cleansing of the Georgian population or a humanitarian catastrophe," said Mr Saakashvili, while doing little to veil his suspicion of the Kremlin's intentions in a region where it wants to maintain its historical influence.
The pro-Western, US-educated lawyer said Georgia must not let "outside forces involve Georgia in a broad-scale war on its own territory. We don't need this conflict, we intend to unite the country peacefully."
Mr Saakashvili has asked Washington and the European Union to intervene in an escalating stand-off between Georgian forces and irregulars from South Ossetia, whose leader insists he will not bow to Tbilisi's demands to come quietly back into its fold.
"We will keep going to the end and insist on the independence of South Ossetia and its people, and at the same time ask the Georgian side to cease fire and come to the negotiating table," said Mr Eduard Kokoity, president of South Ossetia, whose sovereignty is not recognised internationally.
Both sides accuse the other of starting yesterday's fighting, which was the most deadly in several months of worsening relations between Georgia and the small province on its border with Russia, which Tbilisi says is a conduit for contraband and weapons.
"It's obvious that the South Ossetian leadership and some other forces are trying to involve us in a military conflict," said Georgia's parliamentary speaker Ms Nino Burdzhanadze.
"Our soldiers were defending their positions and peaceful residents."
Mr Saakashvili's strong stance against South Ossetia and two other separatist, pro-Russian regions in Georgia has rattled Moscow, which is wary of growing US interest in a nation that has strategic military value and hosts a pipeline taking Caspian Sea oil to Western markets.
Moscow said it would send a high-level delegation to Georgia to broker an agreement between the skirmishing soldiers.
"The situation is escalating with every hour and could spin out of control at any moment," a deputy foreign minister, Mr Valery Loshchinin, said yesterday.