Europe
Russia steps up forces in Georgia conflict zone
By Christian Lowe
Apr 29, 2008, 15:26

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Georgia accused Russia of fanning conflict on Tuesday after Moscow dispatched extra peacekeeping troops to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to counter what it called a military build-up by Tbilisi.

The Russian move marked a new escalation in a crisis between the two ex-Soviet neighbors that has alarmed Georgia's allies in the West, who see the ex-Soviet state as a future NATO ally and a vital transit route for energy supplies.

Russia said the troops increase would not exceed the limits set out in a 1994 ceasefire agreement brokered by the United Nations. But it angered Tbilisi, which accuses the Russian force there of siding with the separatists.

Officials in Moscow said they were forced to act because they had evidence Georgia was readying its forces for an attack on Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed territory on the Black Sea that threw off Tbilisi's control in a war in the 1990s.

Georgia's pro-Western leadership -- which this month angered Moscow by winning an assurance from NATO it could eventually join the alliance -- said it had no such intentions.

"We consider this (the deployment of new Russian troops) to be an utterly irresponsible step ... We think this step, if they take this step, will utterly destabilize this region," Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told reporters.

"We will consider the additional soldiers and arms as illegal and potential aggressors," he said after an emergency session of Georgia's security council.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana was expected to discuss the tensions at talks in Luxembourg with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later on Tuesday.

... international agreements," it said in a statement.

TENSION

The latest crisis between Moscow and Tbilisi came after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered officials to intensify ties with the separatists, citing concerns about the welfare of people living there.

Georgia called it a de facto annexation of its territory and NATO urged Moscow to revoke Putin's order. Some observers said Russia was punishing Tbilisi for its ambitions to join the Western military alliance.

Also this month, Tbilisi alleged that a Russian air force jet had shot down an unmanned Georgian aircraft carrying out reconnaissance over Abkhazia. Russia denied the allegation, saying it had been shot down by separatist forces.

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