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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Abkhazia critical of EU monitors
2008-10-27
Just another step down the road. The puppets will soon demand that the EU force be removed. The EU will comply of course -- they're the EU, after all. Georgia then will get hammered again by the Rooskies just after Bambi is inaugurated. That'll be crisis #1 in Biden's reckoning ...
MOSCOW: The breakaway region of Abkhazia accused European Union monitors of ignoring "armed provocations" by Georgia along its boundaries and said Sunday that its retaliation would be emphatic.

The accusation was made one day after a Georgian district governor and a villager were killed by what the Georgian police said were mortars fired from the Abkhaz side in the boundary zone.

On Sunday, Abkhazia accused Georgia of firing at a border checkpoint, saying one of its border guards had been wounded. The new shooting appears to have increased tension around Abkhazia's de facto border since Russian forces pulled back to within the rebel region this month, following a five-day war with Georgia in August.

"The heightened activity of Georgian subversive groups in Abkhazia, these frequent shootings and killings, are a consequence of the absence of Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone and the inaction of EU monitors," Russia's RIA news agency quoted an unidentified senior Abkhaz security official as saying.

The Abkhaz leader, Sergei Bagapsh, held an emergency meeting of the separatist security council. "Georgia is launching a large-scale terrorist action on the territory of the Republic of Abkhazia," Bagapsh told the meeting, as televised on Russia's Vesti-24 state channel. "I repeat: Shooting at any post from Georgian territory will be punished by retaliatory fire from all weapons we have at our disposal," he said. "If there is a need to bring in armor - let's say, more or less combat-ready tanks - do it."
And they just happen to have a bunch of T-72s, freshly repainted. Even the tank crews have been repainted ...
Video taken after the explosion at the border checkpoint shows several people lying wounded on the ground and villagers screaming and fleeing down a dirt road.

EU observers, in the area to investigate overnight shelling, were just 100 meters away when the blast hit, said a spokesman for the mission. Despite their proximity to the blast, the monitors were unable to determine its origin, the spokesman said.

Tbilisi said the situation in western Georgia was calm. "But Abkhaz separatists, supported by Russian troops, are trying to whip up tension," said the Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman, Shota Utiashvili. "Such statements are intended to destabilize the situation and again introduce extra troops in the parts of Georgia from where they had been pulled back," he continued, referring to Russian troops.

"There has not been a single case of shooting from our side."

A 225-soldier EU mission is monitoring the cease-fire in both de facto border zones.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  A yes, I remember EU monitors of the Israeli-Paleo agreements.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2008-10-27 11:10  

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