Georgia demanded on Tuesday that Russia apologise after a UN report said a Russian air force jet had shot down a Georgian spy plane last month, but Moscow said it did not trust the report's conclusions. "Georgia protests and demands from Russia an apology and compensation for the cost of the drone," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told reporters after Russia's envoy was summoned to his ministry.
Russia denies any involvement in shooting down the unmanned aircraft, which was brought down on April 20 over Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed separatist region of Georgia. Georgia's leaders, who have angered Russia by trying to join Nato, have described the incident as an act of aggression.
The UN report strengthened Georgian accusations - backed by some of its Western allies - that Russia is stoking tension in the volatile region, scene of a separatist war in the 1990s. Russia's ambassador in Tbilisi, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, was summoned to the Georgian Foreign Ministry earlier on Tuesday and handed a note of protest over the incident. In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had no issue with the UN team that compiled the report, but it believed the information it had used was "tendentious and not objective".
"Overall, the quality of these investigations does not inspire confidence," said a ministry statement, which was posted on its Internet site www.mid.ru. Abkhazia and another rebel region, South Ossetia, are constant sources of tension in the stormy relationship between Moscow and Tbilisi. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday he wanted constructive ties with Georgia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told officials in Tbilisi on Tuesday that he wanted to talk.
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