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Russia blocks U.N. statement on Georgia

Other News Materials 17 August 2007 12:43 (UTC +04:00)

( AP ) - UNITED NATIONS - Russia blocked a U.S. attempt Thursday to have the U.N. Security Council issue a statement on last week's incident involving an unidentified aircraft that flew over Georgian air space and dropped a missile near a village.

Georgia has accused Russia of "an act of aggression," saying it has "incontrovertible evidence" that Russian jets launched a missile near the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia's air force flatly denied its planes crossed into Georgia's air space.

But on Wednesday, eight international military experts determined the plane, which flew over Georgian territory on Aug. 6, had come from Russian air space and released the missile.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the council should not take a stand because a high-level Russian military delegation had just arrived in the Georgian capital, Tblisi, for talks with Georgian experts on the incident.

"It would be premature for the council to take any kind of stand on this matter," he said.

U.S. deputy ambassador Jackie Sanders said the United States deplores the attack and supports Georgia's call for an emergency meeting of the council.

"We thought it was really important that the Security Council make a statement on this issue," she said. " Russia was not prepared today to have a formal statement or press statement. This is an ongoing situation. We intend to pursue it."

The missile incident raised tensions between Georgia and Russia, which have been especially high over the past year. The two countries have long been at odds over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another pro-Russian separatist region, and over Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's repeatedly stated determination to bring Georgia into NATO and the European Union.

The international experts agreed with Georgian conclusions that the missile that landed was a Russian-made, anti-radar Raduga Kh-58. Churkin appeared to dismiss this and other investigations.

"The Georgian side has gone out of its way to create all sorts of noise around it, and as a result of it all there is a lot of conflicting information, a lot of conflicting evidence and assertions surrounding this incident," he said.

Sanders said the United States will continue to push for closure of the investigation.

"Any of us in the U.N., if we had a missile coming over our borders and planes from unknown places coming over our borders, we would surely hope that the Security Council, which has a responsibility for international peace and security, would address it," she said.

She indicated that if Russia continues to block a council meeting, the U.S. will call for a vote to get the incident on the council's agenda.

South Ossetia broke free from Tbilisi in fighting in the mid-1990s. Since then, it has been de-facto independent, led by an internationally unrecognized separatist government. Small clashes sporadically continue to break out, more than a decade after the end of the war.

Georgia accuses Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia of backing the separatists, and Saakashvili has vowed to bring the region back under central government control.

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