MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax-AVN) - The South Ossetian authorities have information that Georgian troops are concentrating near the self-proclaimed republic or close to its Georgian villages.
"According to our information, Georgian troops have been concentrating near the Kareli and Gori districts of Georgia, which border on the republic," South Ossetian Interior Minister Robert Guliyev said by phone from Tskhinvali on Tuesday.
Guliyev said there are both Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry soldiers among the troops. "In some Georgian villages in South Ossetia - Kekhvi, Kurta, Kheiti, and Eredvi - dugouts and other fortifications have been built over the past few days," he said.
"The question is: what is Georgia preparing for if not for a new escalation?" Guliyev said.
"We are ready to let representatives of the Joint Peacekeeping Forces access any area controlled by South Ossetia so that they see that we have no military plans," he said.
"Peacekeepers are now the only real force that will help prevent the conflict from escalating and will keep it from developing into a new phase of an armed conflict," he said.
South Ossetia is legally a province of Georgia, but a conflict in the 1990s led to its de facto independence. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is seeking to restore control over South Ossetia. There are peacekeepers (the Joint Peacekeeping Forces made up of Russian, Georgian and Ossetian battalions) and an OSCE mission in the conflict area.