Shots were fired near the motorcade carrying the presidents of Georgia and Poland on Sunday — the fifth anniversary of Georgia’s Rose Revolution — Georgian officials said.
No one was hurt in the incident.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who led the pro-Western 2003 uprising but whose popularity has waned in recent months, blamed Russian troops in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.
“Frankly, I didn’t expect the Russians to open fire,” he said at a news conference with Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
“The reality is you are dealing with unpredictable people. They weren’t happy to see our guest and they weren’t happy to see me either,” he said.
Kaczynski said the shots were fired from only about 30m from the motorcade. He said it was not clear whether the gunfire was aimed at the motorcade or shots were fired into the air.
But he said the incident demonstrated the weakness of the French-brokered truce that ended Russia’s August war with Georgia over South Ossetia.
The truce, Kaczynski said, “does not reflect reality.”
“I know from their shouting that they were Russians; I also know from the president of Georgia that there are Russian outposts on that territory,” Kaczynski said.
“Fire was opened on Georgian territory and territory that until August this year was controlled by the authorities in Tbilisi,” he said.
The plan, brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, called for Russian troops to withdraw from areas outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but they have remained in several areas controlled by Georgia before the war, including the area around the town of Akhalgori, near which the firing was said to have occurred.
The circumstances of Sunday’s incident remained unclear as night fell.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin insisted that no shots had been fired and the Russian Defense Ministry, in statements carried by Russian news agencies, dismissed the Georgian allegations as a “provocation.”
South Ossetian separatist authorities also denied that shots had been fired in the area.
A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow said he had no immediate comment on the Georgian claims.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the shots were fired as the motorcade approached a Russian military checkpoint near the Akhalgori in South Ossetia. But lawmaker Marika Verulashvili said the incident happened as the motorcade approached a Georgian police checkpoint near the breakaway province after visiting a camp of Georgian refugees.
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