Moscow - Moscow has rejected fresh accusations from Georgia
that Russian planes violated its airspace, news reports said
Saturday.
According to the Interior Ministry in Tbilisi, Russian aircraft
entered Georgian airspace on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last,
news agency Interfax reported.
Georgian police fired on one of the aircraft, it was claimed,
causing it to crash on the border with the breakaway region of
Abkhazia.
A spokesman for the Russian Air Force rejected the claims, saying
there were no Russian planes in the area at the time the incident is
believed to have taken place, according to news agency Itar-Tass.
The Georgian interior ministry sent an investigation commission to
the area Saturday and urged Russia to allow an independent
international probe.
Residents had reported the crash Friday to Georgia's Rustavi2
television.
Bad weather meant that the suspected crash site in Kodori valley
could not be reached, but a fire could be seen in the valley which is
split between Georgian and Abkhazian control according to a ceasefire
agreement in the civil war between the two sides.
Earlier this week, Georgia accused neighbouring Russia of
violating its airspace in the same region near the Abkhazian border.
Tbilisi accused Moscow on Tuesday of flying a craft at 490
kilometres per hour at 4,000 metres over Georgian airspace for the
second time this month.
The two sides have been sparring for weeks over an anti-radar
missile that hit near the breakaway region of South Ossetia on August
6.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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