Russia: Georgia Actions May Be 'Military Preparations'

MOSCOW — Russia's government said it is "concerned" by recent Georgian actions around Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which "could be characterized as military preparations."

Russia is working to defuse the situation in South Ossetia, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday in a statement on its Web site. The regional government said that 18 Ossetians were wounded overnight in firefights with Georgian "military units."

South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and exists now as a de facto independent state with Russian peacekeepers and economic support. Georgia, an American ally that wants to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accuses Russia of stoking tensions in South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia.

Georgia "has no plans to take any special measures" in the South Ossetian conflict zone and is "ready to conduct direct dialogue," the country's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

Violence erupted in the region on August 1, when South Ossetia said Georgian shelling of Tskhinvali claimed six lives. Georgia denied using artillery at the regional capital and said South Ossetian forces had sparked the fighting.

[In related news, President Medvedev of Russia has announced plans for a radical overhaul in the way the country's bureaucrats are recruited, a move interpreted by some as an implicit challenge to the authority of Prime Minister Putin, the Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. In a scathing attack on the corruption and inefficiency of Russia's vast bureaucracy, Mr Medvedev said he would take personal charge of a database of specialists who could be drafted into the country's "nomenklatura" civil service.]