SUKHUMI. June 17 (Interfax-AVN) -Georgia has not withdrawn its additional units from Abkhazia's Kodori Gorge where UN observers - two Germans, a Dane and their Georgian interpreter - were taken hostage on June 5 and later freed, deputy defense minister of the unrecognized Abkhaz Republic Garri Kupalba told Interfax-Military News Agency on Tuesday.
"The Georgian party undertook to withdraw these formations, but has not done so yet, and this causes concern in Sukhumi," he said.
The Abkhaz Foreign Ministry has already made a proper statement, Kupalba said.
According to him, "it will take 1.5 or two months to renew monitoring of the Kodori Gorge interrupted after the incident with the UN patrol, as new security guarantees are to be elaborated."
Commenting on the Georgian statement about Tbilisi's plans to increase the number of National Guard reservists for ensuring security of the patrols, Kupalba noted that "the offer will hardly suit Major General Kazi Ashfaq, chief UN military observer in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone."
"Servicemen of the CIS Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone are to provide security of UN officials, but it is practically impossible to do without arranging a stationing point for at least a company of Russian peacekeepers in the Kodori Gorge," he said.
The Kodori Gorge is the only Abkhaz area controlled by Georgia after the 1992-1993 military conflict.