Lavrov: Ossetia border shooting staged by Georgia (1st Lead)

Nov 24, 2008, 11:07 GMT

Moscow/Warsaw - Shots fired at the Polish and Georgian presidential motorcade near the South Ossetian border were staged and 'yet another provocation' by Georgia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

Georgia and Poland said Russian forces had opened fire on the motorcade carrying Polish and Georgian Presidents Lech Kaczynski and Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday from the airport in Tbilisi to a settlement near the Ossetian border.

'This is a real provocation. This is not the first time such things have happened: They stage everything themselves and then accuse the Russian or Ossetian sides,' Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying Monday on a visit to the Peruvian capital of Lima.

'Inviting a president for a celebration in Tbilisi and taking him in a car to a different state - is this not a provocation?' he told journalists.

'There was no shooting from the Russian or South Ossetian side,' Lavrov added.

Russia recognized as independent Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after a five-day war with its post-Soviet neighbour in August.

Russian troops rolled into Georgia to halt Tbilisi's push to reassert control over the areas that have been autonomous since wars of succession in the early 1990s.

President Lech Kaczynski, a right-leaning politician who staunchly backs Georgia's cause against Russia, drew some criticism in Polish media for his outing to the border zone.

The Gazeta Wyborcza daily called his border trip a well-meaning 'provocation' that was meant to shake up indifference to Georgia's plight, but could have ended in tragedy.

'President Kaczynski's good intentions of seeking to help Georgia could have triggered an enormous crisis, the biggest in our region since the Soviet Union's collapse. Did Kaczynski consider that?' the newspaper wrote Monday.

'His Sunday visit to Tbilisi was a hair-raising enterprise,' Gazeta said.