A full-scale war between Abkhazia and Georgia will break out if Russia withdraws its peacekeeping forces, Abkhazi Defence Minister Vladimir Mikanba warned Saturday as fighting raged on in the breakaway republic.
"A full scale war with Georgia will inevitably follow (a Russian withdrawal)," the Interfax news agency quoted Mikanba as saying after the Georgian parliament Thursday said it was giving Russia three months to pull out its troops.
"Abkhazi forces will immediately take control of the Russian bases and the positions of the peacekeeping forces," he said.
Georgian parliamentary speaker Zurab Zhavania meanwhile called for "international peacekeepers under the aegis of the United Nations" to take the place of the Russians in the conflict zone.
Georgia wants "neutrally-minded peacekeepers" in the region, he said, accusing the Russian contingent of siding with the separatist Abkhazians.
He made his comments at a meeting with a delegation from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
The sound of fierce fighting only 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi could still be heard Saturday in the Kodori Gorge, some 30 kilometres away.
Earlier in the week Georgian partisans and displaced Chechen guerrillas launched a bid to retake Sukhumi from the Abkhaz separatists.
A commander of a Georgian-Chechen unit said their tactics were "to hit hard and then to withdraw."
He said there had been no casualties in the previous 24 hours, but an Abkhazian defence ministry spokesman said on Russian TV6 station that Georgian-Chechen units had lost four fighters and Abkhazian forces two.
The Interfax news agency, quoting Abkhazian sources, said Abkhazian reconnaissance groups had clashed Saturday with Georgian army troops which entered the republic earlier in the week, but the report could not immediately be checked independently.
Several hundred regular Georgian army troops were sent overnight into the Kodori Gorge region -- which straddles the unofficial border between government-held and separatist territory -- and seven trucks full of interior ministry troops arrived during the day.
Georgian officers have stressed that their role is to protect Georgian villages in the area, and that they do not intend to get involved in the fighting.
Abkhazia claimed de-facto independence from Georgia in 1993 after a war in the early 1990s in which the separatists were supported by Moscow.
Russia sent peacekeepers to Abkhazia and to a security zone in Georgia along its unofficial border with the separatist region.
On Friday, following a vote by the Georgian parliament, Tbilisi ordered Russia to pull out its peacekeeping forces within three months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in return said Moscow regarded the Abkhazian conflict as "Georgia's internal affair" and that Russia was "ready to withdraw peacekeepers if Georgia wants them out."
A spokesman for Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, Kakha Imnadze, quoted by ITAR-TASS, hailed Putin's statement as "positive." -- KODORI GORGE, Georgia (AFP)
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