S.Ossetia Focus of Uranium Smuggling Case

One Russian and three Georgian citizens are serving prison sentences in Georgia in connection with the smuggling of 100 grams of highly-enriched uranium from Russia via breakaway South Ossetia, Georgian Interior Ministry official confirmed on January 25.

The case goes back to January 2006, when Russian citizen Oleg Khintsagov and three of his Georgian accomplices were arrested by the Georgian police in Tbilisi.

But the news was only released a year later, on 24 January  2007, by Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili through American media sources. Merabishvili was visiting the United States this week. The visit was not publicized and the Interior Ministry officials have declined to comment on details of the trip.

The first comments about the case in Tbilisi were made on January 25 by the chief of the analytical department of the Georgian Interior Ministry, Shota Utiashvili, who mainly confirmed the facts that were already outlined by Minister Merabishvili in separate interviews with the New York Times and the Associated Press on January 24.

“Our undercover agents in South Ossetia disseminated information that they were willing to buy radioactive materials; as a result some Ossetians appeared who have been operating in South Ossetia and North Ossetia. They told our [undercover] agents that they had uranium for sale. On January 31, 2006 they smuggled 100 grams of uranium enriched by more than 90%, which is already material for a nuclear weapon. We know that the material was smuggled from Russia, but we do not know yet the exact location from where the uranium was brought,” Shota Utiashvili told reporters on January 25.

Oleg Khintsagov, who is serving his eight and a half year prison term in Georgia, was arrested in Tbilisi while trying to make a deal worth USD 1 million.

Georgian officials say that Khintsagov told undercover agents that he would be able to smuggle two more kilos of uranium that he kept in Russia’s North Ossetia, bordering with breakaway South Ossetia. But after his arrest Khintsagov refused to cooperate with the law enforcers, Utiashvili said.

“We have sent all the information about the case to the Russian side, we have also sent samples of the materials and they have confirmed that it was highly-enriched uranium, that’s all; we have not received any other information from Russia,” Utiashvili said.

“Unfortunately no one arrived from Russia, not even to interview this person,” Interior Minister Merabishvili told AP on January 24.

But Russian news agency Interfax reported on January 25, quoting an unnamed official from the Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency, that Georgia was “unwilling to cooperate.” The source also was quoted as saying that it was impossible to identify the origin of the uranium.

Officials in Tbilisi say that information about this “highly sensitive case” was confidential for a year because they hoped to obtain more details, but it became impossible as Russia was not cooperating.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on January 25 that Tbilisi will not make further comments on “the role that any other government might have played in this investigation” as the case is “a most urgent matter of international security and not of politics.”

This is the second time in as many months that breakaway South Ossetia, which is described by officials in Tbilisi as a “black hole,” has appeared in the focus of the western media’s attention.

In late November, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. Secret Service and Georgian police were investigating an international counterfeiting operation that stretches from breakaway South Ossetia to the United States.

Authorities in breakaway South Ossetia dismissed the reports of a counterfeiting operation and smuggling of enriched uranium as part of Tbilisi’s “black PR campaign” against Tskhinvali.

“Allegations of this kind are absolutely groundless… Georgia itself supports criminals and terrorists based in Pankisi gorge,” a statement by the breakaway region’s Interior Ministry issued on January 25 reads.

The Georgian Foreign Ministry said on January 25 that the case of the smuggled uranium underlines the necessity to deploy international monitors at the border crossing point between breakaway South Ossetia and Russia’s neighboring North Ossetian Republic.

“It is important, however, to clarify that the government of Georgia has long sought for international observers to be stationed on the sections of its border with the Russian Federation adjacent to Georgia’s separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The trafficking of illicit goods through these borders and into these territories is rampant. The risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction creates a need for the international community to secure these borders,” the Foreign Ministry’s statement reads.

Meanwhile, President Saakashvili said on January 25 that it is time to launch a move towards the country’s final reunification. Speaking in the eastern Georgian town of Signagi, Saakashvili stated that “there are criminal gangs who hold Tskhinvali’s population and the population of the surrounding villages hostage.”