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Georgia: Int’l experts say plane came from Russia

16 August 2007 09:34 (UTC +04:00)

Georgian officials said Wednesday that international military experts have determined that a single plane that entered Georgian air space last week and dropped a missile came from Russian air space.
That conclusion by outside experts, distributed in a Foreign Ministry statement Wednesday, is likely to bolster Tbilisi’s insistence that the aircraft was Russian in origin and that missile that landed near a Georgian village may have been of hostile nature.
Tbilisi has angrily demanded an explanation for the Aug. 6 incident from Russia, which has denied that any of its aircraft flew into Georgia and has accused Tbilisi of theatrics and staging a provocation.
The ministry has not named the experts or identified their precise expertise or backgrounds, saying only that they were from the United States, Sweden, Latvia and two other countries and that it had invited them to help with the investigation.
According to the Foreign Ministry, the experts said one, not two, aircraft entered Georgian airspace from Russian territory three times in all.
The first incursion lasted less than a minute, the ministry said. Two subsequent flights over Georgian airspace lasted for 11 minutes each; during the last of the three, the aircraft flew deep into Georgian territory./APA/