SUKHUMI. June 5 (Interfax-AVN) - UN military observers examine possibility to send a helicopter from Sukhumi to the Kodori Gorge where a UN patrol consisting of three officers and an interpreter, has been kidnapped on Thursday.
Vyacheslav Eshba, the defense minister of the unrecognized republic of Abkhazia, told Interfax-Military News Agency that he had already negotiated with UN officials and permitted the flight of the helicopter above the Abkhaz territory.
Negotiations between UN observers and Georgia concerning the flight in Kodori are in progress, he said.
Eshba noted that observers avoided flying over the gorge after in October 2001 a UN helicopter had been shot down and nine persons, its crew and UN officers, had been killed during the Gelaev group's raid in the Kodori Gorge.
Unidentified terrorists in the Kodori Gorge have fired on Thursday morning at a UN patrol vehicle and taken the officers and the interpreter hostage. Kodori Gorge is the only Abkhaz area controlled by Tbilisi after the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.
The terrorists have also detained, but subsequently freed, three Russian peacekeepers of the CIS Collective Peacekeeping Force.
It is the third kidnapping of UN observers in the Kodori Gorge in the last three years. Twice they were released as a result of negotiations.