Smallest spark could start war in Georgia regions

MOSCOW-On wooded hillsides where Georgian and separatist troops eye each other through the sights of their guns, the smallest spark could set off a war.Last week the detention of four Georgian soldiers in the breakaway South Ossetia region quickly escalated into a crisis. Georgia threatened an attack on the Russian-backed separatists and in response Moscow sent fighter jets into Georgian airspace 'to cool hot heads in Tbilisi'. Georgia's pro-Western government, the separatist leaders and the Kremlin say they do not want war.But with tensions at unprecedented levels, they could find themselves hostage to events on the ground."It's like somebody said: a couple of guys with guns could start a war in these places if they were intent on doing so," said Svante Cornell, an expert on Georgia at the Institute for Security and Development Policy, a Stockholm-based think tank.Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both on the southern slopes of the Caucasus mountains, threw off Georgian control in separatist wars in the post-Soviet 1990s and now run their own affairs with help from Russia.The conflicts have snowballed into an international row drawing in Russia on one side and on the other the United States, which wants to see Georgia join NATO.Moscow and Washington are competing for influence over Georgia, an ex-Soviet state that hosts the only pipelines pumping gas and oil from the Caspian Sea to world markets without going through Russia.
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