"My passport was given back to me today and I am getting ready to return to Moscow," said General Valery Yevnevich, a deputy commander of Russia's Land Forces.
Last Friday, Georgia's military police stopped a diplomatic car with Russian diplomats near the town of Gori, 16 miles from Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on its way from Tbilisi to Tskhinvali for a document check but then released the diplomats in the evening and forced them to return to Tbilisi.
The Russian delegation in the car included Yury Popov, the Russian ambassador at large and co-chairman of the Joint Control Commission on the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict resolution, and other officials. General Yevnevich, who is also a JCC member, had his passport taken away and it was not returned until today.
The same car with Russian diplomats was stopped again Saturday by Georgian military police near the town of Gori and held for an hour for what the Georgian authorities called "a routine document check."
Russia's Foreign Ministry said this was a provocation aimed at a "further escalation of tensions in the region that sets back work on the political resolution of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict."
Yevnevich said the Georgian authorities had failed to provide a clear explanation of the incident.
"I did not hear any reasonable explanation - they said it was a routine document check," he said. "They also said I was in charge of the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia and should not have been visiting the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict."
But the general said he was also an JCC member and had the right to visit the area in this capacity.
Russia asked leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations on July 16 to convince Georgia to refrain from provocations, especially acts staged to coincide with the G8 summit, now underway near St. Petersburg.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would continue its peacekeeping missions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to stop the bloodshed in the two self-proclaimed republics in Georgia, and demand that Georgia strictly abided by agreements on the status of Russian peacekeepers and diplomats in the country.
