 |
|
Register Domains
|
|
|
|
|
Namibian Towns
|
|
|
|
|
Languages
|
|
|
| | |
TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) -- Georgia on Monday said it would hand over four Russian army officers arrested on spying charges to European mediators in a decision that will help defuse a crisis with Russia.
"Today there will be a ceremony of handing over the arrested Russian officers to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) chairman-in-office," said a spokesman for President Mikhail Saakashvili.
The move came after a build-up of tension, following the arrest of the Russian officers last Wednesday, leading to a war of words between Moscow and Tbilisi, including a sharp verbal attack by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
OSCE chairman-in-office, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, was scheduled to arrive in the Georgian capital at around 1200 GMT for talks with Saakashvili.
The spokesman said the four would be handed over in a formal ceremony after these talks.
Earlier, Saakashvili dismissed a broadside from Putin, saying Moscow was unlikely to use force to free the four officers whom Tbilisi said worked for Russia's GRU military intelligence and had been building a spy network.
"I don't think they are irrational enough to use military force," Saakashvili told Western journalists in a late night interview on Sunday. "It is an overreaction caused by nervousness that they have created by themselves."
Putin, in unusually harsh remarks, accused Georgia of "state terrorism with hostage-taking" by arresting the Russian army officers last week and charging them with spying.
The arrests provoked the most serious crisis between pro-Western Georgia and its giant former Soviet master in years. Russia has withdrawn its ambassador and dozens of officials from Tbilisi and stopped issuing visas to Georgians.
Putin's comments, made after a meeting near Moscow of security officials, were interpreted by Georgia's Foreign Ministry as a threat to use military force.
But Saakashvili, in the interview in the port town of Batumi, brushed this off as well as possible economic sanctions by Russia, which provides Georgia's gas supplies and controls the country's power grid.
"People have got used to economic problems and have started coping with them," he said, adding that Moscow had become "hostages of their own propaganda".
Putin on Sunday also compared Georgia's moves against the officers to the actions of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's feared secret police chief, Lavrenty Beria. Both Beria and Stalin were ethnic Georgians.
Putin suggested Saakashvili was fooling by believing he could count on "foreign sponsors", a reference to the United States, for support in the confrontation with Russia.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the 56-nation OSCE have urged a solution.
Scathing language
Saakashvili swept to power in a popular revolution in 2003 and wants to move his small country of five million firmly out of Russia's orbit and to join NATO.
Russian troops stationed in Georgia were put on alert and ordered to use force if their bases came under threat, the commander of Russian forces in the South Caucasus said.
But after making his tough statements, Putin told the Defense Ministry to continue a long-planned pull-out of Russian troops from Georgia, news agencies quoted his spokesman Alexei Gromov as saying.
Russia's Defence Ministry had said on Saturday it was suspending the withdrawal. Russia is to pull out its troops from two bases by the end of 2008.
Referring to Putin's charge that the Georgian leadership was acting like Stalin's police chief, Saakashvili said: "We should avoid these kind of comparisons ... because they are not relevant, they are not helpful and they are not right."
Saakashvili also denied he had been prompted by the United States into provoking the crisis.
"This is not true. The U.S. State Department made it very clear that this is a bilateral issue between Georgia and Russia."
| Georgia to hand Russians to OSCE | Log-in or register a new user account | 0 Comments |
|
| Comments are statements made by the person that posted them.
They do not necessarily represent the opinions of the site editor. |
| |
|
|
News Categories
|
|
|
|
|
Main Menu
|
|
|
|
|
Login
|
|
|
|
|
Online
|
|
|
|
|
Ads
|
|
|
| |
