MOSCOW. May 16 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Defense Ministry said it was surprised by alleged Russian plans to inflict air strikes in the Georgian Kodori gorge.
"Such groundless information can cause nothing but surprise," the ministry's press center chief Nikolai Deryabin told Interfax-Military News Agency on Thursday.
"Russian peacekeepers stationed in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone are operating in strict accordance with their mandate on the separation of conflict parties. No other tasks have been given to the Russian peacekeeping contingent," Deryabin said.
That is how he commented on a statement of Lieutenant General Avtandil Ioseliani, chairman of the Georgian intelligence department, who said that on May 16 to 20 Abkhazian armed formations and Russian servicemen and volunteers from southern Russia would storm the upper part of the Kodori gorge.
In an interview given to the first channel of the Georgian television Ioseliani said that, in particular, according to the Georgian intelligence data, the air strikes on the upper part of the gorge would be inflicted from three directions including the Tsebelga and Lata villages as well as from the Marukh pass where the aircraft might be used as well.
Ioseliani stressed that a group of Russian officers recently visited Abkhazia to prepare for the operation. The Georgian official refused to name the officers but said that intelligence agents knew them. He did not rule out the fact that regular Russian units and volunteer Cossacks from southern Russia might be involved in the event.
The Georgian party says that at present some 4,000 Abkhazian servicemen and volunteers are located on approaches to the Kodori gorge.