Officials have confirmed that a police operation in underway in troubled Kodori Gorge against the rebellious paramilitary group led by local warlord Emzar Kvitsiani.
“A planned police operation is underway with the aim to restore constitutional order in Kodori,” Kakha Lomaia, the Education Minister, told Rustavi 2 television in the evening on July 25.
“I am not in the position to talk about details of this operation,” Lomaia said, later adding that “Those who defy and resist government forces will be demolished.” He declined to comment on whether there have been any casualties.
He said that the Kodori-based paramilitary group Monadire (Hunter) now has only two options: “they will either surrender arms, or they will be liquidated.”
Meanwhile, official reports say that government forces disarmed a 60-member unit of the militia group. Also according to this report, rebels blew up one of the bridges in the gorge.
No independent confirmation of these reports is available.
There is also no confirmed information on the total number of rebels. Before being disbanded by the Defense Ministry in 2005, the Monadire group consisted of up to 400 men.
Influential lawmaker Givi Targamadze, who chairs the parliamentary committee for defense and security, said that order in Kodori will be restored “soon and effectively.”
“Everybody will see that talks about the strength of our law enforcement agencies are not just empty words,” MP Targamadze said.
His deputy MP Nika Rurua ruled out the possibility that the current police operation will grow into “a large-scale military operation.”
News about clashes between the governmental forces and militias in Kodori broke out at about 8 pm local time, according to Georgian media sources.
Russian television, citing Russian peacekeeping command in Abkhazia, also reported that a shootout was taking place near the village Omarishara in Kodori gorge.
Earlier on July 25 Georgian Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili ruled out, as he put it, “military operation” in Kodori, but said that police operation was possible to restore rule and order there.
Russia warned on July 25 that the use of force in Kodori might lead to a new conflict in the region.
Vice-Speaker of the Georgian Parliament Mikhail Machavariani reiterated an official position of Tbilisi and said that Russia is behind rebellious warlord Kvitsiani.
Upper Kodori gorge is the only territory of breakaway Abkhazia out of the secessionist authorities’ control.
There are two possible ways to reach upper Kodori Gorge – one is from the Abkhaz-controlled territory from the south and another from the north-east via a rough mountain road from Svaneti, the western Georgian region bordering with breakaway Abkhazia.
Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry released a recording of a phone conversation between Kvitsiani and Irakli Batiashvili of the opposition Forward Georgia party. In a taped conversation Kvitsiani tells Batiashvili that breakaway Abkhazia’s Deputy Defense Minister Gari Kupalba offered a help with Abkhaz fighters to repel government troops. Later Batiashvili told Rustavi 2 that the taped conversation was edited and missing the portion where Kvitsiani says that he has declined Kupalba’s offer.
