Agency Caucasus—Abkhazia accused European Union monitors on Sunday of turning a blind eye to Georgia’s armed provocations along its border and said that it would return a forceful reprisal.
An unnamed Abkhaz security official was quoted by Russia’s RIA news agency as blaming “the heightened activity of Georgian subversive groups in Abkhazia, these frequent shootings and killings” on the absence of Russian peacekeeping forces in the conflict zone as well as on the non-intervention of European Union monitors.
Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh held with his security council an emergency meeting. He blamed Georgia for carrying out a large-scale terrorist action against Abkhazia, and threatened to make use of all the weapons that his country has got to retaliate attacks from Georgia on any Abkhaz posts.
The Abkhaz administration also accused Georgia on Sunday of firing at one of the border checkpoints and said that one of its border guards was wounded.
Abkhazia’s accusation came one day after the Georgian district governor of Tsalendzhikha, Gia Mebonia, and a villager were killed by what Georgia said were mortars fired from the Abkhazian side in the boundary zone.
Russia fought a brief war with Georgia in early August when it launched a military offensive to retake South Ossetia, a north Caucasian republic which, like Abkhazia, managed to gain their independence from Georgian rule in the early 1990s.
Georgian forces had to pull out of South Ossetia as Russian troops forces their way into the heart of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, from both north Caucasian regions.
Five days of fighting were followed by a decision by the Russian administration to withdraw its forces from buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia under a French-brokered ceasefire deal. Simultaneously, the Kremlin officially recognized the two regions as independent states, as well.
The European Union monitors have since been in charge in the buffer zones of ensuring compliance with the ceasefire deal.
HS
