WHO WAS GUIDING THE MISSILE?

The Georgian authorities on 6 August released a report that the country's airspace had been violated by Russia with Su-24 fighter jets, which had dropped two missiles near the Georgian village of Tsitelubani in the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. As is usual in such cases, the Georgian military offered proof - Georgian aviation and Defence Ministry radar data, an audio recording of Georgian and Russian flight controllers about the violation of airspace, test results from the remains of one of the missiles dropped and so on. According to the military's information, there were two Russian-manufactured Raduga KN-58 guided missiles, one of which fortunately failed to explode.

President Mikheil Saakhasvili was quick to react to the incident. He visited the site with diplomats and made his first statement on the spot. "This incident is aimed at one thing: disturbing the calm in Georgia, sowing panic, dividing society and changing our country's policy. We will respond with unity and surprising calm, so that no-one retains any illusions that such acts can frighten Georgia," Saakashvili said.

The Georgian leadership called on the international community, including the UN Security Council, to help them get to the bottom of the matter - and they did not have to wait long for responses. Immediately after the incident a number of countries, including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Sweden de-clared their desire to send specialists to the international expert group re-quested by Tbilisi. The US and EU also called for the incident to be investigated and made statements in open support of the "victim".

At the same time, the Russian military immediately started to deny the assumptions of their Georgian colleagues, saying that the incident had been fabricated. The chief of Russia's General Staff, Yuriy Baluyevskiy, said: "This is an act of provocation against Russian peacekeepers and against Russia as a whole in the run-up to a session of the Joint Control Commission being held in Georgia."

The chief of the Russian air force General Staff, Igor Khvorov, described Tbilisi's accusations against Russia as political fantasies and again stated that there had been and could not have been flights of Russian aircraft over Georgian territory. In support of their statements that the incident had been staged by Tbilisi itself, the Russians added that the Georgians had hurriedly neutralised - i.e. exploded - the missile, without waiting for international tests.

Another tangled situation has thus arisen in Georgian-Russian relations, with both sides describing the incident as a provocation. Only one thing is clear: that the missile was guided. But by whom? The matter has to be investigated.