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Georgia denies preparing for war as Russia claims

Georgia does not want war in its breakaway region of South Ossetia, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said yesterday after Russia accused Tbilisi of triggering overnight clashes with rebels and preparing for war.

South Ossetian authorities earlier said that 18 people were wounded in what they described as heavy overnight artillery bombardment of the breakaway capital Tskhinvali and surrounding villages.

“Confrontation is not in Georgia’s interests and I hope and I’m sure that the continuation of confrontation is not in Russia’s interests either,” Saakashvili told journalists in televised comments in the town of Gori near South Ossetia.

Tensions between the former Soviet republic of Georgia and its two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and the Black Sea region Abkhazia, have increased in recent months.

Both regions, which broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s, enjoy financial and political support from Moscow and the vast majority of locals have Russian citizenship.

Moscow and the West are vying for influence over vital energy transit routes in the region, and Georgia has angered Russia by pushing for NATO membership.

Moscow had accused Georgia of gearing up for war and Russian television reported a Georgian military buildup near the boundary with South Ossetia.

“Concern was expressed that the action of the Georgian side around Tskhinvali can be regarded as war preparations,” the Russian foreign ministry said on its Web site after a telephone conversation between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin and South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity.

Marat Kulakhmetiv, commander of Russian peacekeeping forces, said fighting broke out at 11:40pm between Georgian and South Ossetian forces, involving small arms, automatic weapons and mortars.

Planned peace talks with Russian negotiators in Tbilisi yesterday fell apart as both sides traded accusations about who initiated the fighting.

Georgian Reintegration Minister Temur Yakobashvili said separatists “opened fire from hospitals and schools in order to provoke us into returning fire in the direction of their schools and hospitals and then to accuse us of barbaric actions.”

“The international community should be seriously concerned over this,” he told a news conference yesterday, local media reported.

The Interfax news agency quoted a senior South Ossetian official as saying the mechanized battalion of the Georgian army’s 5th brigade was being loaded onto trailers and dispatched to the conflict zone.

“When these detachments arrive, the Georgian side plans to launch large-scale military actions,” the secretary of the separatist Security Council Anatoly Barankevich told Interfax.

Georgia’s interior ministry denied the report.

Russia has previously accused Georgia of building up its military forces around South Ossetia and Abkhazia, allegations Georgia denies.

The US, Georgia’s main ally, urged the two sides on Wednesday to halt the violence and resume negotiations but it was unclear if upcoming talks between South Ossetian and Georgian officials would go ahead.
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