MOSCOW:Russia would have to retaliate if Georgia used force in the breakaway zones of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday after Moscow sent extra troops to Abkhazia.
"If Georgia puts in place the threat it has made on a number of occasions about the use of force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, we would be forced to take retaliatory measures to protect the lives of our citizens," Mr Lavrov said after talks with EU officials in Luxembourg.
Georgia yesterday accused Russia of fanning conflict after Moscow sent extra peacekeeping troops to Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region to counter what it called a military build-up by Tbilisi. The Russian move marked a new escalation in a crisis between the two neighbours that has alarmed Georgia's allies in the West, who see the ex-Soviet state as a future Nato ally and a vital transit route for energy supplies.
Russia said the troop increase would not exceed the limits set out in a 1994 ceasefire agreement brokered by the UN. But it angered Tbilisi, which accuses the Russian force in Abkhazia of siding with the separatists.
Officials in Moscow said they were forced to act because they had evidence that Georgia was readying its forces for an attack on Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed territory that threw off Tbilisi's control in a war in the 1990s. Georgia's pro-western leadership - which this month angered Moscow by winning an assurance from Nato that it could eventually join it - said it had no such intentions.
"We think this step, if they take this step, will utterly destabilise this region," Georgian prime minister Lado Gurgenidze told reporters. "We will consider the additional soldiers and arms as illegal and potential aggressors," he said after an emergency session of Georgia's security council.
The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana was expected to discuss the tensions at talks in Luxembourg with Mr Lavrov yesterday.
Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said Russia's move had created a dangerous situation. "It is altogether obvious that this is part of a fast and worrying escalation of Russian measures for controlling territories," Mr Bildt wrote on his blog, http://carlbildt.wordpress.com. "We are now in an obviously dangerous situation where one step leads to another. So it is important that there is a European reaction."
Russia announced the new troops four days after warning that it would use force to defend its compatriots if Georgia attacked Abkhazia or the second Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia.
The two regions have for years been a flashpoint between Russia and Georgia.
The conflict escalated this month after President Vladimir Putin ordered a strengthening of ties with the separatists. The Kremlin said it was concerned for the welfare of residents, but Tbilisi called it a de facto annexation. Five days later, Tbilisi accused a Russian jet of shooting down an unmanned Georgian drone over Abkhazia.
Russian officials denied involvement. - (Reuters)