Saakashvili Comments on Kodori

President Saakashvili said on March 15 that he hopes the international community will ?properly assess? the March 11 shelling of upper Kodori Gorge after UN observers unveil their findings of the incident.

?We welcome the activities of the UN observers there and we hope that it will unveil accurate findings ? and we already have information that they will unveil very accurate information about what happened there [on March 11],? Saakashvili said in his annual state of the nation address to the Parliament.

A joint fact-finding team consisting of UN observers, Russian peacekeepers, and representatives from the Georgian and Abkhaz sides were in upper Kodori Gorge on March 13-15 to investigate the reported shelling of the villages by army helicopters, which Georgia claims entered Georgian airspace from the Russian Federation.

Itar-Tass news agency reported on March 16, quoting Valery Chaban, the commander of the Russian peacekeeping force in the Abkhaz conflict zone, that the findings of the joint fact-finding team are not likely to be unveiled before March 19.

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