RUSSIA OFFICIALLY ACCUSES GEORGIA OF A "RUDE ALLEGATION"
By Aghavni Harutyunian
AZG Armenian Daily
31/08/2007
"The August 6 missile incident was staged", announced the General
Engineer of the Russian Air Forces Pavel Akulenok., one of the Russian
military experts, who were sent to Georgia to probe into the evidence
provided by the Georgian side.
Head of the Russian Air Forces Headquarters Lt. Gen. Khvorov at a news
conference showed a daily report by a Russian military air controller,
which purportedly proves that no military plane crossed the Georgian
frontier on the day in question.
Radar records provided by the Russian side, he said, clearly showed
passenger planes were in the area concerned at that time. The
Georgian records only showed, what Khvorov termed, the so-called
intruder aircraft. "We can make only one conclusion based on this
information," he said. "No aircraft crossed the Georgian border from
the Russian Federation."
The Russian experts said that they could find nothing of significance
at the incident site at the region of Gori as "the most interested
evidence" – the rocket crater – had already been filled in.
Lt. Gen. Khvorov said as well as this, other "crucial evidence had
also been destroyed by the Georgian side." "We had the impression
that someone did not want us to find the truth," he added.
"Rocket debris found at the site had been brought from elsewhere",
he said.
"How could Russia do that, while it had gained the opportunity to
organize the Olympic Games in Sochi, when it was interested in the
stability of the region?
There is no logic in it. It is a rude allegation against Russia",
underlined the Head of the Russian Air Forces Headquarters.It is
worth to mention that these kind of incidents cause damages to not
only Russian-Georgian relations, but also Armenia.
Moreover, taking account of the fact that there are no special
tendencies to normalize those relations, we can assure that the
history of the "not-exploded missile" will continue. In the logic of
the Russian-Georgian relations’ "performance", we can settle also the
August 29 information by Georgian media about the release of the 15
Russian peacekeepers, who were arrested by the Georgian police out
of the territory of their mission, as the Georgian side assured.
That incident also was not protected from the series of mutual
accusations, allegations and sabotages of the two sides.
In addition, we can qualify the announcements of the both sides
as unprincipled.
Anyway, if the Russian side wants to use the factor of its willingness
to provide stability in the region in the period of the Olympic Games
in Sochi to show its innocence, Georgia, in its turn, does not want
to see Abkhazia to be involved in those games.
Nevertheless, the most important issues remain the following: Why
did the two aircrafts appear in the air of the Gori region on August
6? Who launched the missile? And why didn’t it explode?