Georgia calls for UN Security Council action on Russia (Roundup)

Aug 28, 2008, 13:49 GMT

Vienna - Georgia's foreign minister called on the UN Security Council on Thursday to take action against Russia, alleging it had breached international security by its action in her country.

At a special meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, both Georgian Foreign Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili and Russian representative Anvar Azimov traded allegations of ethnic cleansing in Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Tkeshelashvili said the Security Council should act under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, which deals with non-military and military sanctions to restore peace and security.

'It is not only a threat to international security, but a breach of it,' Tkeshelashvili said, referring to Russia's military involvement in Georgia and its recognition of Georgia's separatist provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The minister also claimed Russian forces had conducted ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia.

'The territory previously known in Soviet times as South Ossetia is completely cleansed of remnants of the Georgian population,' she said. In the buffer zone around the breakaway province, ethnic cleansing was ongoing, she added.

Russian forces had acted together with ethnic Ossetian, Cossack, and Chechen militias in killing young men, raping and driving away women, as well as destroying villages and fields, Tkeshelashvili said.

Russian representative Azimov told reporters after the meeting that there was 'no evidence of ethnic cleansing' of Georgians in South Ossetia, while accusing the other side of having committed such crimes.

Stressing the process of independence for the two Georgian regions was 'irreversible', Azimov said it was now up to South Ossetian authorities to deal with such allegations.

Asked when Russian forces would leave areas around South Ossetia, Azimov said that 'sooner or later we will leave these territories.'

In its meeting, the Permanent Council of the OSCE, the organization's decision-making body, did not formally discuss the outstanding modalities of sending up to 100 additional observers to Georgia, a diplomat said.

By Thursday evening, the Vienna-based organization will increase the number of monitoring officers to 22, a spokesman said.

The 56 OSCE members still have to agree on where in Georgia the officers will be deployed for observing the ceasefire between Russian and Georgian forces, as Moscow has so far refused to allow them in South Ossetia.

It was up to South Ossetia whether to allow in OSCE monitors, the Russian representative said, adding that according to the Russian military, 'for security reasons it is not the time' to do so.

Georgia's foreign minister reiterated Tbilisi's position that any geographic limitation for monitors 'cannot be tolerated.'