MOSCOW, Sept 5: The Geor-gia ceasefire document brokered by France and unveiled in Moscow last month was later altered on a crucial point before its signing in Tbilisi, a Russian official said on Friday.

“In the Moscow version, the text refers to security ‘for’ Abkhazia and ‘for’ South Ossetia,” said the official.

In the document given to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, it was presented as ‘in’ Abkhazia and ‘in’ South Ossetia. It is not the same,” he added.

The wording is key because it refers to the “buffer zones” that Russia has created in undisputed Georgian territory and that Moscow says are necessary to prevent Georgian forces from threatening the two breakaway provinces.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday asserted that the ceasefire agreement presented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili contained numerous “distortions”. The version given to the Georgian leader “contains a whole range of distortions of the agreement reached by presidents Medvedev and Sarkozy”, including replacement of the preposition “for” with “in.”

“This is a direct forgery, and that is how we regard it,” Lavrov said during a press conference. His comments were published on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.

“The authentic text is the one approved by the two presidents in the Kremlin on Aug 12,” Lavrov said.

Russia has been heavily criticised by the West for the continued presence of its troops — Moscow calls them “peacekeepers” — in Georgian territory beyond the borders of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia.—AFP