Georgia, Russia Trade Threats Over Raid

Tensions between Russia and Georgia threatened to flare into open warfare Tuesday as each accused the other of bombing villages in the separatist region of Abkhazia.

Russian and Georgian officials gave differing accounts of the raid. Russia said two Georgian fighter planes dropped bombs on three villages in the Kodor Gorge--the same place where a helicopter was shot down Monday, killing five U.N. military observers, a translator and three crew members.

Georgia said the villages were attacked by planes and helicopters that crossed into Georgian territory from Russia.

One person was reported killed.

The incident is especially dangerous because it threatens to combine and escalate two separatist conflicts in the Caucasus region--Abkhazian rebels’ battle for independence from Georgia, and the guerrilla war against Russian forces in nearby Chechnya.

Abkhazia, a former resort area on the Black Sea coast, has operated as a de facto independent republic since it fought a war for independence that ended in 1994. Since then, a force of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers has been stationed there, and a large U.N. observer mission has kept an eye on the tense border zones.

Observers have been warning for months that hostilities could break out on the Russian-Georgian border. Russia accuses Georgia of harboring Chechen rebels, while Georgia accuses Russia of supporting the separatists in Abkhazia.

The Kodor Gorge is an ethnic Abkhazian area nominally under Georgian control. The U.N. helicopter was apparently shot down by a shoulder-fired grenade launcher as it was making a twice-weekly observer flight over the gorge. It was clearly marked as a U.N. aircraft.

Georgia blamed Abkhazian separatists for downing the helicopter and hinted that Russia was behind the air raids on the villages Tuesday.

“Georgia cannot say with certainty to which country the bombers that crossed into Georgian airspace belonged,” said Georgian Foreign Minister Irakly Menagarishvili. “But we can say with certainty that Abkhazia hardly has such means.”

Menagarishvili described the incident as “a large-scale anti-Georgian provocation” that raises the specter of war. “If this provocation is not curbed, it may evolve into aggression against the Georgian state,” he said.

Vladislav Ardzinba, president of the self-declared Abkhazian republic, ordered a general mobilization. Thousands of Abkhazians were reported to have signed up the first day.

The Abkhazian separatists accused Chechen fighters who moved into the region last month of shooting down the U.N. helicopter.

Russia denied responsibility for the air attack on the villages and accused Georgia of permitting the Chechen fighters to operate on its territory.

“It is becoming obvious that either the Georgian leaders do not control the situation on their own territory, or they manipulate the terrorists to further their own aims,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said after the attacks.

Last month, Russia reported that a force of perhaps 500 Chechen fighters had left bases in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, which borders Chechnya, and made their way more than 150 miles across Georgia to the border with Abkhazia, where they took up positions in the Kodor Gorge.

Alexander A. Konovalov, president of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow, accused Georgian officials of allowing the Chechens into their territory in a deliberate bid to destabilize the region.

Russian analysts believe that the Chechen fighters may be trying to reenter Russia in a predominantly Muslim region that borders the Kodor Gorge and ignite a new conflict there.

Anatoly S. Kulikov, a former Russian interior minister, said in an interview on the NTV television network that the region “is already smoldering.”

Georgia has long charged that Russia’s air attacks on Chechen rebels spill over into Georgian territory and that Russian peacekeepers secretly side with the Abkhazian separatists.

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Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.