Kokoity: Tbilisi Wants Tensions in S.Ossetia to Overshadow Internal Problems

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity, who is currently visiting Moscow, said on February 9 that the Georgian leadership’s attempts to trigger tensions in South Ossetia aim at overshadowing persisting social problems in Georgia, which threaten to grow into, as he put it, “social upheaval.”

“The promises by Georgian reformers and Saakashvili are a great soap-bubble, which will burst or has already burst. The people have the right to ask: ‘Where are all those promises? Where is the improved social life?’ In order to shift [public] attention away from these problems, [the Georgian authorities] need a victory,” the South Ossetian leader told Russian reporters on February 9.