South Ossetia is concerned over Georgia's increasingly aggressive rhetoric, the republic's deputy foreign minister said on Thursday.
"The Georgian authorities have recently made aggressive statements on South Ossetia and Abkhazia," South Ossetian minister Alan Pliyev said.
He cited as an example Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's statement, made during an interview with the PIK TV channel on January 25, that Georgia still wanted to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under the control of Tbilisi.
Saakashvili also reportedly said that he would "celebrate the next New Year in Sukhumi," the capital of the former Georgian republic of Abkhazia.
The statements come up as Georgia continues to build up its armed forces with U.S. help, Pliyev added.
Abkhazian diplomats said earlier Georgia's policies prove that Saakashvili's recent pledge to the European Parliament that he would not use force over South Ossetia and Abkhazia were nothing but an attempt to mask his plans to restart a military campaign.
In his November address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Saakashvili said Georgia would "never use force to restore its territorial integrity and sovereignty and will only use peaceful means to ensure the withdrawal of the occupation forces and its reunification."
"People do not believe in any peaceful initiatives [by Georgia] anymore," Pliyev commented.
South Ossetia, along with, Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. Georgian forces attempted to bring South Ossetia back under central control in August 2008, but were repelled by the Russian military. Russia subsequently recognized both republics, but only Nicaragua, Venezuela and the tiny island nation of Nauru have so far followed suit.
MOSCOW, January 27 (RIA Novosti)
