Georgia Denies Existence Of Chechen Resistance Fighters On Its Territory
Georgian Foreign Ministry official Zurab Kachkachishvili rejected
on April 27 as a provocation Russian claims that the counterterrorism
regime imposed in several districts of southeastern Chechnya last week
was necessitated by the danger that Chechen militants currently based
in Georgia might seek to cross the border into Chechnya to stage
terrorist attacks there.
Russia's National Counterterrorism
Committee announced on April 16 the official end of the counterterror
operation launched in Chechnya by then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin
10 years earlier. But within days, the Russian military commandant's
office in Chechnya announced the reimposition of counterterror
restrictions in the Vedeno and Itum-Kale raions of southern Chechnya.
Vedeno borders on Daghestan, while Itum-Kale, to the west of Vedeno,
borders on Georgia.
A spokesman for the Russian military claimed
on April 21 that up to 60 militants were amassed in Itum-Kale in
readiness to stage a series of terrorist acts in the north of Chechnya.
He said those militants had been trained in camps on Georgian territory.
The
counterterror operation was subsequently extended to Shatoi Raion
(directly north of Itum-Kale) and parts of Shali Raion, which lies
northwest of Vedeno and southeast of Grozny. Vladimir Patrin, a
spokesman for the operational headquarters of the Russian forces in
Chechnya, told journalists on April 24 that the counterterror operation
was extended to Shatoi and Shali in response to intelligence reports of
planned terrorist attacks against government and law enforcement
officials. The restrictions in Shali were lifted late on April 26; on
April 28, an explosive device detonated in Shali as three police patrol
cars drove by, but inflicted only minimal damage.
Kachkachishvili
explicitly denied on April 27 that Chechen militants could enter Russia
from the Pankisi Gorge, which in 2000-02 served as a safe haven for a
group of Chechen militants led by field commander Ruslan Gelayev. He
said international organizations have conducted repeated tours of
inspection and can attest to the absence of militants in Pankisi. But
he apparently did not specify when the last such tour of inspection
took place.
It was to target that Chechen militant presence in
Pankisi that the United States began its $64 million Train and Equip
program for the Georgian military. Georgian forces launched two special
operations to expel Chechen militants from Pankisi, in the fall of 2002
and early 2003, after which then-Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze
affirmed in February 2003 that there were no longer any Chechen
fighters in Pankisi. Gelayev was killed in February 2004 in Daghestan, close to the border with Georgia.
Russian
officials have, however, periodically claimed that groups of "gunmen"
have resurfaced in Pankisi. Lieutenant General Anatoly Zabrodin, who
heads the Border Protection Service of Russia's Federal Security
Service (FSB), went public with such claims in January 2007, and again
in February 2008. On both occasions, Georgian officials denied those
allegations.
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