Georgia demands UN talks on alleged Russian missile strike

TBILISI (AFP) - Georgia called for urgent UN Security Council talks yesterday as Russia continued to deny Tbilisi's accusations that one of its planes was behind a missile strike on Georgian territory.

"Georgia will ask for an emergency session of the UN Security Council (to) consider the recent incident of the bombing," said Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili.

The announcement came as members of a Russian-led peacekeeping force in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia spent a second day examining the crater left by an unexploded missile on Monday. The missile landed some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

They were to be accompanied by international observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a spokeswoman for the pan-European security and democracy watchdog said.

"The process of examining the site is ongoing," Martha Freeman told AFP.

No one was killed in the attack Monday, as the weapon failed to explode when it landed in a field just outside the village of Tsitelubani.

However, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's accusation that Russia deliberately fired on Georgia has raised the stakes in already tense relations between the pro-Western Caucasus country and its former master.

Bezhuashvili said "we are continuing to gather proof. We have just received civil aviation radar recordings that confirm the military recordings."

He also claimed that OSCE and Russian investigations, neither of which have been made public, backed the Georgian accusation that the attacking plane approached from Russian territory.

"We are interested in radar data from other countries. We call on the European Union to cooperate."

Russia flatly denies responsibility and has suggested that a Georgian plane carried out the attack as a provocation.

"Moscow is extremely concerned by the incident and considers it an attempt to derail tangible positive tendencies in Russian-Georgian relations, and also to complicate the situation in resolving the Georgian-Ossetian conflict," Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Karasin was quoted as saying in a statement.

Ties between Moscow and Tbilisi are in tatters amid accusations that Russia is supporting rebels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as Russian jitters over Georgia's bid to join the NATO military alliance.

When Georgia arrested four Russians on spying charges in 2006, Moscow responded with sweeping sanctions against its tiny neighbour. Some restrictions have been eased this year, but the air raid row deals a fresh blow to relations.

The latest flare-up prompted concern across Europe.

The United States meanwhile called on both sides to work together to resolve the incident.