Georgia Vows To Crush Kodori Gorge Militia

Georgia Vows To Crush Kodori Gorge Militia

July 26, 2006 -- The Georgian government has vowed to crush a militia leader and his supporters in the Kodori Gorge, amid reports of casualties on both sides.

Giorgi Arveladze, the head of the presidential administration, said Emzar Kvitsiani and his militia must surrender their weapons or else they will be "liquidated."

Georgia sealed off the gorge , part of which lies in the breakaway region of Abkhazia, earlier this week after Kvitsiani, a former presidential envoy, said his illegal militia will fight if the government used force to disarm it.

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli, on a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, said Georgia was carrying out what he described as a "very limited police operation" in Kodori to capture Kvitsiani.

Both Abkhazia's separatist authorities and Russia, which keeps a contingent of peacekeepers in the region, have warned a military operation in Kodori could spark a wider conflict.

Giorgi Arveladze, the chief of President Mikheil Saakashvili's administration, said the operation would be over in a matter of hours. The independent television station Rustavi 2 reported that Georgian authorities had given Kvitsiani and his supporters hours to surrender.

Arveladze also said two police officers were wounded but that their lives were not in danger.

Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili "categorically" denied "any possibility of a military operation in the zone," adding that "there is no heavy military equipment whatsoever in the zone and we are not going to bring it."

(Interfax, Reuters, Rustavi 2, Novosti-Gruziya)

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Georgia Vows To Crush Kodori Gorge Militia