Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia overwhelmingly endorsed its split with Tbilisi on Monday in a referendum Georgia's prime minister said was part of a Russian campaign to stoke a war.
The prime minister's stark language was tempered though by the removal before the vote of the hawkish Georgian defence minister, the strongest sign yet that Tbilisi wants to ease a bitter stand-off with the separatists and their Russian backers. Election officials in South Ossetia said 99 percent of the roughly 50,000 voters said "Yes" to separation from Tbilisi - a defiant reaffirmation of a split that has existed since a war in the early 1990s.
In an interview with Reuters, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said the vote was a "provocation" and part of a Kremlin strategy to ratchet up tensions in the region.
"They are recently portraying us as if we are going to start a war there, which has never been our intention," he said on a visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels. "Their recent rhetoric and action are making us draw the conclusion that they themselves are getting prepared for a war." A sliver of land in the Caucasus mountains, South Ossetia has no international recognition but is propped up by Moscow. In a parallel presidential election in South Ossetia on Sunday, Kokoity was re-elected with 96 percent of the vote.