ZUGDIDI (Georgia), Oct 15: Abkhaz helicopters attacked Georgian and Chechen rebels in the disputed Kodori gorge on Monday after Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze appealed to Russia to help prevent the latest wave of separatist violence erupting into full-scale war.

Shevardnadze offered to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the crisis in Abkhazia only days after the Georgian leader threatened to evict a contingent of Russian peacekeepers from the conflict zone.

Meanwhile, two Abkhaz MI-8 helicopters targeted several hundred Georgian and Chechen fighters holed up near the gorge’s Sugarloaf Mountain amid renewed claims from Tbilisi that the Russian military had joined the separatists.

But Shevardnadze sought to mend fences with Russia by insisting that cooperation over Abkhazia could help Tbilisi and Moscow to improve relations damaged by the two-year war in Chechnya.

“The key to improving relations between our two countries lies in solving the Abkhaz conflict,” Shevardnadze said on Monday.

Russia has accused Georgia of harbouring Muslim separatists ever since Moscow launched its self-styled “anti-terrorist” campaign in Chechnya on October 1, 1999.

Nevertheless Shevardnadze said that Putin was a politician with whom he could have a “constructive dialogue” and he offered to meet the Kremlin boss for urgent talks “in Tbilisi or Moscow or anywhere else.”

Shevardnadze added that he had “no doubts about Putin’s sincerity in saying Russia respected the territorial integrity of Georgia.”

“But why has Russia blocked for almost a year the adoption by the United Nations of a document fixing Abkhazia’s status as a part of the Georgian state?” he asked.

Georgian partisans fighting Abkhaz forces only 15 kilometres from the breakaway “capital” Sukhumi said on Monday that the unmarked planes that carried out the strikes could only have come from Russia.

“The question is — where did the Abkhazians get the helicopters and missiles, where did they get the heavy artillery with which they are targeting us,” said one Georgian commander.

“We’re fighting not only the Abkhazians but also the Russians, because that’s where the planes must have come from.”

Shevardnadze hinted on Monday that the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers could be extended on condition that Ukraine and “possibly the United States and some other nations” sent reinforcements.

Shevardnadze was due to hold talks on Tuesday with officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Abkhazia’s defence spokesman Garry Kupalba said Abkhaz forces undertook “mopping up” operations in the Kodori gorge after blockading around 400 Georgian and Chechen fighters over the weekend.

Forty OSCE observers have been stationed since February 2000 on Georgia’s 80 kilometre border with Chechnya, north of the Kodori gorge.

Abkhaz leaders have accused Chechen rebels of joining forces with Georgian partisans in a fresh round of fighting that has seen the death toll rise to 75 since the beginning of this month. —AFP