ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
June 28, 2004 Monday 6:33 AM Eastern Time

South Ossetia blocks buses with Georgian passengers

By Eka Mekhuzla

TBILISI, June 28

Police of South Ossetia, Georgia’s enclave, has stopped six passenger
that were en route from different cities of Russia to the Georgian
capital Tbilisi.

More that 150 Georgian passengers, including 40 children, have
entered South Ossetia’s Dzhavsky district from Russia through the
Roksky tunnel, and have been stranded for about 24 hours, a spokesman
at the office of the Georgian state minister for conflict settlement
told Itar-Tass on Monday.

Several passengers managed to make telephone calls to Tbilisi, saying
that they were running out of food.

They said South Ossetian authorities demanded that Georgia release
two trucks with fuel cargoes that Georgian police seized last week as
contraband.

South Ossetian Interior Minister Robert Guliyev has confirmed the
fact of blocking the busses at a migration control post.

“The ban on the traffic of the private passenger and cargo transport
has been introduced for the time until Georgia lifts the economic
blockade of South Ossetia and returns the trucks confiscated from our
citizens,” Guliyev told Itar-Tass by phone from Tskhinvali.

He added that “this measure applies only to those who live in
Georgia; Russians Azerbaijanis, Armenians and citizens of other
countries can calmly travel in transit through the territory of South
Ossetia”.