Army General Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, said: "Russia has no plans to start a war with Georgia, because we understand that it would be a war of the Russian people against the Georgian people."
The army chief was responding to a statement by Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Okruashvili who was quoted by a Russian newspaper as saying that if war broke out between Russia and Georgia, Russia would lose.
"If Mr. Okruashvili has an itchy trigger finger, I hope he realizes the consequences of what can happen when he wages war against his own citizens, Russian citizens residing in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and peacekeepers who are the only guarantor of stability in the region," Baluyevsky said.
"All responsibility for the consequences of such provocations will rest upon this, I dare say, impertinent politician," he said.
Russia retains a peacekeeping presence in Georgia's turbulent regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which gained de facto independence following bloody conflicts after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Georgia's leadership, which is currently embroiled in a spying row with Russia, accuses the Kremlin of supporting the breakaway regions' drive for full independence.
On October 13, the UN Security Council unanimously approved a Russian-sponsored draft resolution on Georgia urging the ex-Soviet country to refrain from provocative actions in its breakaway region of Abkhazia, and calling for an extension of the Russian peacekeeping mission in the region until April 15, 2007.
Following talks Monday with Baluyevsky, the chairman of NATO's military committee, General Raymond Henault, said the Western security alliance does not intend to deploy its peacekeepers in Georgia's conflict zones in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, because it regarded both conflicts as a bilateral issue of Russian-Georgian relations.
