On Tuesday night, Georgia's Rustavi television aired a recording of an alleged conversation between Emzar Kvitsiani, a militia leader in the Kodori Gorge in breakaway Abkhazia, and Irakly Batiashvili, the leader of Georgia's opposition movement.
Rustavi said the tape, provided by the Interior Ministry, featured Kvitsiani saying the Abkhazian leadership was providing him with weapons and manpower to withdraw the Kodori district from Tbilisi's control.
"The material demonstrated by the Interior Ministry is shameful misinformation," Batiashvili said. "It was a telephone conversation which they used, cut and then broadcast."
He said Kvitsiani had phoned him following false media reports about his meeting with the Abkhazian defense minister and the peacekeeping commander in the self-proclaimed republic of Abkhazia.
Batiashvili retold the conversation as he remembered it. He quoted Kvitsiani as saying: "I do not know the Russian peacekeeping commanders. Only [deputy defense minister of Abkhazia Garri] Kupalba has contacted me and offered help."
Kupalba is a relation of Kvitsiani, the Georgian press said.
But Batiashvili said the most important was Kvitsiani's answer to the offered assistance.
"He said he did not need their help and this bit was of course cut [in the televised version]," the opposition leader said.
Anatoly Zaitsev, chief of Abkhazia's General Staff, said the aired audio conversation was a provocation and denied supplying weapons to Kvitsiani.
"It is merely information warfare," he said.
Georgian forces started a special operation in the Kodori Gorge, which has continued through the night. A high-ranking source confirmed Wednesday that three people had been wounded.
