Russian general accuses Georgia of fabricating report

Russia’s top military officer today accused Georgia of fabricating a report of a Russian missile attack, as Moscow and its small Westward-looking neighbour continued angry bickering over an incident that heightened bilateral tensions.

Georgia said radar data proved Russian jets violated its airspace on Monday and fired a missile aiming at a Georgian radar. The missile, which did not explode, landed near a village in the north-western Gori region near Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia patrolled by Russian peacekeepers.

Gen Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of Russia’s military General Staff, said that Georgia concocted the incident to foment tensions.

“I’m simply convinced that it was a provocation by Georgia ... This is a provocation against the Russian peacekeepers. This was a provocation against Russia as a whole,” Baluyevsky said in televised comments during a visit to China.

In Tbilisi, Levan Nikoleishvili, Georgia’s first deputy defense minister, told The Associated Press that Baluyevsky’s statement was “sheer nonsense.”

Tbilisi has accused Moscow of trying to destabilise the country and of backing separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that broke away from Georgia during wars in the 1990s. President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose efforts to integrate into the West and join Nato have irked Moscow, has vowed to return the regions to central government control.

Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that records from radars compatible with Nato standards showed that a Russian Su-24 jet had flown from Russia into Georgia and launched a missile. Investigators identified the weapon as a Russian-made Raduga Kh-58 missile, designed to hit radars, the ministry said. The missile, code-named AS-11 by Nato, carried a warhead weighing more than 300 pounds.

Lt Gen Igor Khvorov, chief of staff for the Russian air force staff, reiterated that the Russian aircraft had not conducted the raid. “It’s a political invention,” he said at a news conference.

Georgian officials said their country has no Su-24 jets or missiles of that type.

The Russian missile missed its target because the Georgian military switched off the radar after it had detected the intrusion and the missile’s launch, Defence Ministry spokesman Col. Zurab Pochkua said on Rustavi-2 television.

“We switched the radar off, so that the missile wouldn’t home in on it,” he said.

Georgia’s Foreign Ministry called the incident “undisguised aggression” and sought an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

The US State Department on today condemned what it described as a “rocket attack” without naming a responsible party, and praised Georgia’s “restraint in the face of this air attack.” In Brussels, a Nato spokesman said today the alliance was following the investigation into the issue and has agreed to stay in close touch with the Georgian government.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said its mission in Georgia had confirmed that Georgian airspace was violated, but could not say how many and what kind of aircraft were involved. The mission also said it could not identify the missile.

Relations between Russia and Georgia have been strained since Saakashvili was elected president in early 2004 and made clear his intentions to move the former Soviet republic closer to the West.

Georgia has accused Russia of backing separatists; Moscow, in turn, has accused Tbilisi of fomenting tensions in the rebel provinces. Georgia has repeatedly accused Russia of violating its airspace – claims Russia has invariably denied.

Earlier this year, Georgia said Russian helicopters fired on its territory in the Kodori Gorge, a volatile area on the fringes of Abkhazia. The two nations exchanged similarly fraught accusations at the time, but a subsequent report by the UN observer mission in Georgia last month said it was not clear who had fired at the Georgian territory.