Detentions raised in 'difficult' Russia, Georgia talks

GENEVA (AFP) – Russia and Georgia greed to meet again in January after a "difficult" round of talks on Wednesday that was partly dominated by the issue of Georgians recently detained in Moscow-backed South Ossetia, diplomats said.

Georgia said it had raised the detentions during the eighth meeting on reducing tensions between Russia and Georgia, which fought a five-day war over the separatist region in August 2008.

"This is a huge problem," Georgian First Deputy Foreign Minister Giorgi Bokeria said after the talks in Geneva.

In a statement, international mediators "expressed their concern about a number of recent detentions," while "the overall security situation on the ground was assessed as relatively stable."

Despite the fresh spat, delegations from Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia, will hold a ninth round of talks on January 28, they added.

"The general assessment of this meeting has been once again a useful meeting, a difficult meeting," said Johan Verbeke, special representative of the UN Secretary-General.

Verbeke said "the participants have had the courage to put difficult issues on the agenda."

"It was a difficult discussion in terms of having to build bridges between positions which at this stage remain apart," he added.

The United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are overseeing the talks.

"The discussions were dominated by the issue of the detention and kidnapping of Georgian citizens," Bokeria told journalists, although the statement by the international groups only alluded to the issue indirectly.

The mediators insisted that the detentions should be addressed through emergency mechanisms set up in the region that allow local officials and commanders to discuss them directly.

Four Georgian youths, aged 14 to 17, were arrested in South Ossetia's main city Tskhinvali allegedly armed with grenades and other explosives last week, according to the separatist region's administration.

They have been charged with carrying explosives and illegally crossing the border. Bokeria dismissed the charges as "absurd."

Georgia has accused the separatist administration of "kidnapping" the boys from a village near the de facto border with South Ossetia.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin hinted at concerns about arrests but played down the incident with the teenagers.

"I think we have no reason to be concerned for their fate if they were with their relatives and were doing nothing illegal," he told journalists.

Karasin claimed the presence of Russian border guards on the South Ossetia-Georgia line "has on the whole stabilised the situation."

Earlier, Georgia also accused Russian forces of "kidnapping" five Georgian citizens off the Black Sea coast near Abkhazia.

On Tuesday, Russia's top military commander accused Georgia of re-arming.

The Geneva talks are aimed at preventing renewed violence over the Russian-backed rebel regions, and easing humanitarian pressures over refugees and water supplies and movements of local inhabitants.

Elements of a possible agreement on the non-use of force along the borders were examined for the first time during Wednesday's talks, the mediators said.

The discussions have so far failed to make progress on help an estimated 30,000 displaced people.