MOSCOW, October 16 (RIA Novosti) - Military prosecutors of the North Caucasus military district have denied Georgian TV reports that a deputy commander of the Russian peacekeeping force in the breakaway province of Abkhazia was detained.
"That information is untrue," a directorate spokesman said.
Georgia's Rustavi-2 TV company said earlier that Russian prosecutors had detained the deputy commander on drug charges. The TV channel said other military officials had also been detained, including the chief medical officer and a unit commander, in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict.
Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, sparking a bloody conflict in the region.
The UN Security Council unanimously approved an extension of the mandate for its observer mission in Georgia on Monday by another six months, until April 15, 2008.
