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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia sez hard boyz entering through Georgia |
| 2005-02-14 |
| Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Saturday that "terrorists" were entering Chechnya from Georgia and declared that Moscow reserved the right to launch preventive strikes against militants anywhere. Ivanov's forceful comments at the Munich Security Conference in Germany came in direct response to a question from a Georgian minister. "We have killed so many foreigners in Chechnya carrying passports with a Georgian tourist visa in their pockets
You can't deny they are penetrating our territory through the territory of Georgia, that's a fact," Ivanov said. "If
we know that some place in the world there are terrorists in hiding, plotting to carry out a terrorist act on Russian territory, should we wait and let them go, and then try to apprehend them? Or hit them straight away? I think the answer is clear," he added. Russia has said before that it reserves the right to launch preventive strikes, which Ivanov — in a reference to U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq — said were "not a Russian invention." But his remarks were especially pointed given that Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili had voiced her concern about Moscow's stance only minutes earlier. "I'm a bit worried by the accusations that terrorists were again crossing the border and the fact that you might use preventive strikes," she told Ivanov. Russia has suggested Chechen separatists are in hiding in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, near the border with Chechnya. Georgia says the rebel fighters are no longer in the remote valley. To Zurabishvili's further question as to why Russia retained two military bases in its former Soviet neighbor, Ivanov responded simply that there was no agreement so far on the status of the bases or how long they would remain. Ivanov said Russian intelligence indicated between 150 and 200 fighters had been "posted by international terrorist organizations" to Chechnya. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |