20 March 2008, 21:23
KGB of South Ossetia denies any interference in the work of OSCE and UN Missions
The KGB (Committee for State Security) of South Ossetia denies the information disseminated by Russian and Georgian mass media that its officials had searched representatives of the OSCE and United Nations when the latter tried to survey the reserved garbage dump located in the southern suburb of Tskhinvali within the project on environment protection and confiscated a photo and video cameras from them together with filmed materials, but then returned everything back.
"Representatives of so-called Sanakoev's administration who have disseminated this fiction, did not even know that the mentioned group of foreign officials visited South Ossetia not on the 19th but on the 18th of March. However, neither on March 18, not on March 19 the employees of the KGB of South Ossetia confiscated any photo and video equipment and materials from OSCE and UN workers, therefore, there was no need to give anything back," the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed at the press service of the KGB of South Ossetia.
The employees of the press service have emphasized that "the KGB of South Ossetia operates exclusively within the legal framework and is not engaged in prosecuting diplomatic officials." They also noted that "they are not engaged in catching spies among the OSCE and UN employees who work in Tskhinvali," having added that "they have enough work of investigating those terror acts, which had been accomplished by Georgian special services in 2007-2008 in the territory of South Ossetia."
The press service of the Committee has emphasized that this was not the first case of spreading disinformation by the Georgian party. "This is not only our opinion. Late this January, Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon in his report on the situation in the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict zone to the UN Security Council directly declared that "the Georgian authorities are presenting false information to the world community," a KGB source has stated.
Author: Georgiy Vaneyev, CK correspondent