Two European ceasefire monitors were released Tuesday after being briefly detained in the tense border zone between Georgia and its separatist region of South Ossetia, a spokeswoman for the mission said
Georgia's Interior Ministry said earlier Tuesday that two monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had been "kidnapped" by South Ossetia militia near the Georgian- controlled village of Adziv and taken to the separatist capital, dpa reported.
"We dealt with the matter and spoken to the relevant parties and the situation is now over," OSCE spokeswoman Martha Freeman said. "We will continue investigating the matter."
Authorities in South Ossetia denied the incident, saying the two OSCE officials were stopped at a border checkpoint and released immediately after a check of their identification papers.
"At 10:20 am (0620 GMT) on Tuesday two representatives of OSCE crossed the Georgian-South Ossetian border. They were stopped by the officers from local militia of the village of Artsevi," RIA Novosti news agency cited South Ossetian officials as saying.
The leader of the separatist province, Eduard Kokoita, said the OSCE observers had been detained for "trespassing on the territory of South Ossetia," news agency Interfax reported.
The Vienna-based security watchdog has long had an observer mission based in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi charged with monitoring the situation in the small post-Soviet country's two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia since they fought and won wars of secession in the early 1990s.
But Moscow last year blocked the continuation of the OSCE's mandate in Georgia - which expires February 18 - after its five-day war with Georgia in August.
EU ceasefires monitors, meanwhile, have been patrolling a buffer zone around South Ossetia as part of a peace deal that ended Russia's military standoff with Georgia over the province.
The Russian-backed South Ossetian leadership has since denied access to both the OSCE and EU observers missions, leaving murky the real state of affairs in the small province where civilians are reportedly caught between rival militias who have not been disarmed.