(Civil Georgia) Russia's reckless acts in its drive to incite and support separatist movements in Georgia must be countered by the international community, President Saakashvili said in a speech at the UN General Assembly on September 26.
In particular, Saakashvili slammed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for his remarks made to reporters in New York on the same day. He said that in the September 20 incident Georgian special ops forces had captured and then brutally executed two Abkhaz militiamen.
"This morning a senior Russian official," Saakashvili said in his address, "made very unconstructive and unsubstantiated and untrue accusations against Georgian forces, saying that they killed two innocent people in Upper Abkhazia."
"What this senior Russian official failed to say, however, is that one of the people was a lieutenant colonel of the Russian military and he was killed during a law enforcement operation against armed separatist insurgents."
"One has to wonder," Saakashvili continued, "what was a lieutenant colonel of the Russian army doing in the Georgian forests, organizing and leading a group of armed insurgents in a mission of subversion and violence?"
(In a transcript of Saakashvili's speech, issued by the Georgian foreign ministry on September 27, this line, however, says: "leading a group of armed insurgents on a mission of terror.")
"I want to ask our Russian friends: is there not enough territory in Russia? Are not there enough forests in Russia for Russian officers not to die on Georgian territory in the Georgian forests, for them not to fight in a foreign territory for God knows what cause?"
He said that the Russian lieutenant colonel had been serving in the Russian peacekeeping forces and subsequently in the local Abkhaz militia.
President Saakashvili also said that "elements in Russia are actively and illegally building a new big military base" in the South Ossetian stronghold of Java in the north of the breakaway region.
Java is located outside the officially recognized borders of the conflict zone - an area within a 15-km radius of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali . OSCE observers who are deployed in the region to monitor the situation in the conflict zone are not entitled to carry out any inspections beyond this 15-km radius.
Saakashvili said in his address that "this dangerous escalation is taking place under the very noses of international monitors whose job is to demilitarize this territory."
He said Georgia had "very conclusive evidence", including video footage, to confirm the reports of Russians assisting South Ossetian secessionist authorities in building the military base in Java.
"Reckless acts like this must be highlighted and countered," Saakashvili told the international community, "Our collective job today is not to ask how this can be possible, rather it is to act with determination."
He said that "the only obstacle" to integrating South Ossetia was the separatist regime that basically consisted of "elements from security services from neighboring Russia who have no historic ethnic links to this territory."
In an apparent attempt to give more promotion to Dimitri Sanakoev , the head of the Tbilisi-backed South Ossetian provisional administration, Saakashvili stated that this new force on the ground represented the people of South Ossetia .
Saakashvili said that Sanakoev was "chosen by the people of South Ossetia in democratic elections to represent them."
"We should respect the courage of those ethnic Ossetians who decided to take this path within Georgia," he said and added that the emergence of this new force was an opportunity for peace.
He called on the international community "to seize this historic opportunity and to avoid an escalation of violence which is also an eventuality and a major risk." loud.