Georgia says two OSCE monitors detained by separatists

Feb 10, 2009, 10:36 GMT

Moscow/Tbilisi - Georgia's interior ministry said Tuesday that two European ceasefire monitors had been detained by South Ossetia militia on the border of the separatist region and Georgia.

A spokesman for the ministry, Shota Utiashvili, told news agency Interfax that the two monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were detained near the Georgian- controlled village of Adziv and taken to the separatist capital Tskhinvali.

'The Georgian interior minister strongly condemns the incident and calls on the command of the occupying (Russian) forces to immediately release the hostages,' the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Authorities in South Ossetia denied the incident, saying the two OSCE officials were released immediately after their identification papers were checked.

'At 10:20 am (0620 GMT) on Tuesday two representatives of OSCE crossed the Georgian-South Ossetian border. They were stopped by the officers from local militia of the village of Artsevi,' RIA Novosti news agency cited South Ossetian officials as saying.

The leader of the separatist province, Eduard Kokoita, said the OSCE observer had been detained for 'trespassing on the territory of South Ossetia,' news agency Interfax reported.

The spokeswoman for the OSCE mission to Georgia, Martha Freeman, declined to comment.

But EU mission spokesman Steve Bird confirmed two OSCE observer had been briefly detained and were already released.

Earlier reports had said the two observers had been from the European Union's mission to the area.

The Vienna-based OSCE has long had a mission based in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. EU ceasefires monitors, meanwhile, have been patrolling a buffer zone around South Ossetia as part of a peace deal that ended Russia's brief war with Georgia over the province.

The Russian-backed South Ossetian leadership has denied EU observers access to South Ossetia itself.