TBILISI. July 2 (Interfax-AVN) - Georgia has refused to exchange three officials from the Georgian State Security Ministry, who were detained in Tskhinvali, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia, for detained Russian citizens.
"The Georgian State Security Ministry is not going to exchange its officials for bandits," State Security Minister Vano Merabishvili told a briefing on Thursday. Three Russian citizens of Ossetian origin were detained in South Ossetia's Java district on June 24.
"The program of restoring Georgia's territorial integrity will undergo significant changes in the near future. The country's relevant services are working to help the situation in South Ossetia take a positive turn," he said.
On June 26, the detained Russian citizens received three- month sentences in a pretrial detention facility for illegally crossing the Georgian border. Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Giorgy Getsadze said that these people were on a reconnaissance mission.
The State Security Ministry officials were detained on June 27. Weapons, maps of the region, and "a list of the pseudonyms of agencies" in the republic were confiscated from them.