Georgian Security Council approves request to UN for peace-enforcement operation in Abkhazia

Tamaz Nadareishvili, who is chairman of the Tbilisi-based Abkhaz parliament-in-exile comprising Georgian deputies to the Abkhaz parliament elected in 1991, told journalists in Tbilisi on 24 February that the parliament-in-exile has asked the UN Security Council to mount a peace-enforcement operation to bring Abkhazia back under the control of the central Georgian government, Caucasus Press reported. Nadareishvili added that the Georgian National Security Council has approved that initiative. Nadareishvili claimed the Abkhaz authorities are so alarmed by his campaign to persuade the United Nations to mount such an operation that they have sent hit men to Tbilisi to murder him, Caucasus Press reported. At the same press conference, Nadareishvili also said that a deputy security minister of the Abkhaz government-in-exile and two of his subordinates have been fired for leaking to parliament a document falsely alleging that Nadareishvili has at his command an illegal armed formation code-named Jupiter (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 12 February 2003). LF