Reports: Russian servicemen detained in Georgia
By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI

The Associated Press
05/20/05 16:38 EDT

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – Four Russian servicemen from a base in
Georgia were briefly detained Friday amid a dispute between the two
former Soviet republics over a timetable for ending Moscow’s military
presence in the neighboring nation, media reported.

The servicemen were briefly held in the Black Sea port of Batumi,
where one of Russia’s two military bases in Georgia is located. In
televised comments, police said the soldiers were drunk and had been
offending people.

An employee at an office of President Mikhail Saakashvili’s political
party in Batumi said on Rustavi-2 television that the Russians came
to the office and cursed at staff. One of the detainees denied that,
telling Rustavi-2 that they had been walking down the street and
minding their own business.

Russian military officials said the men were sober and that their
detention appeared to be a provocation, Russia’s Interfax news agency
reported. They were returned to the Russian base several hours after
being detained, it said.

Georgia and Russia have been unable to agree on a timetable for the
withdrawal of the bases, which have been a source of growing animosity
as Saakashvili and his government seek to shake off Russian influence.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko was quoted by
Russian news agencies this week as saying Moscow’s latest offer was
to complete the pullout in the course of 2008, but Georgia wants the
bases out by January 2008.

A new round of negotiations is to be held Monday in Tbilisi.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s government expressed concern over a statement
Thursday by the chief of the Russian military’s general staff that
some equipment from the bases in Georgia could be transferred to
the territory of Azerbaijan’s foe Armenia, where Moscow also has a
military presence.

“We would not like this. We are concerned because the situation in
he region is very sensitive,” Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov
told journalists in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a bitter dispute over
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan that has been under the
control of ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s, following fighting
that killed an estimated 30,000 people.

A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently.
International efforts to broker a settlement have so far failed,
and the threat of a new war remains.