Georgia denies meeting request over arrested Russian spies

[News_Editor]

Georgia denies meeting request over arrested Russian spies

2010-11-30 04:15:14 GMT+7 (ICT)

TBILISI, GEORGIA (BNO NEWS) -- Georgia on Monday denied it has received a second meeting request from Russia over the arrest of four Russians accused of spying, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

"Russia has so far not addressed such request to us in relation to the Russian nationals awaiting trial on espionage charges," Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said.

On November 5, Georgia announced that it disrupted an alleged spying ring consisting of 15 individuals, four of them Russians, who were conspiring to pass on secret information about Georgia for Russia's intelligence services.

Russia was granted permission to meet with the suspected spies via the Swiss embassy in Tbilisi, which represents Russian interests in the ex-Soviet Union country. The meeting took place on November 22.

After the meeting, Ruslan Skrylnikov, the son of one of the detainees, said that another meeting would be held soon. However, the Goergian government, led by President Mikheil Saakashvili, says it has not been informed of such a request and plans to go ahead with the trial.

Earlier this month, hours after the arrests took place, Russia condemned the arrests as a provocation and said it was part of a Georgian 'anti-Russia psychosis.'

"We are deeply angered by the reports about the arrests of Russian citizens in Georgia and we are currently studying the situation," a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, saying the arrests were made on the eve of the NATO-Russia summit in Lisbon and the OSCE summit in Astana to hurt Russia.

Georgia and Russia broke diplomatic relations in August 2008. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that normalization of relations between both countries is impossible as long as Saakashvili remains in power, whose second presidential term expires in 2013.

Since the Georgia-Russia war in 2008, which lasted five days, the two nations have been in the midst of a spy flaps. Last January, a former Georgian diplomat who advised the country's mission to NATO was sentenced to 20 years in prison after allegedly spying for Russia during the 2008 war.

Two months later, in March, a Rostov-on-Don military court convicted a Georgian and two former Russian military officers for spying for Georgia.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states after the five-day war with Georgia in 2008. It followed after Georgian forces had attacked South Ossetia in a failed attempt to bring it back under its control.

Hundreds of Russian, Georgian, South Ossetian and Abkhazian soldiers were killed during the conflict, as well as more than 160 civilians. One foreign civilian, Dutch RTL News cameraman Stan Storimans, was also killed when Russian forces carried out an airstrike in the Georgian city of Gori.

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