Rebels say shot down Georgian drone

By James Kilner and Chris Baldwin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia shot down another Georgian spy drone on Thursday, its Defence Ministry said, although Tbilisi immediately denied the allegation from the Russian-backed rebels.

Minutes before the announcement, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had told visiting Russian reporters war between Georgia and Russia over Abkhazia had only narrowly been averted days earlier but remained a real threat.

According to the Abkhazian authorities this was the third Georgian drone shot down in the last five days and in Helsinki the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) called for calm.

"Today at 1705 (2:05 p.m.) the Georgians grossly violated Abkhazian airspace with a pilotless drone over the Ochamchirsky region," Gary Kupalba, the Abkhazian deputy defence minister, told Reuters by telephone.

"In response to this, anti-air defences were ordered by the defence minister to shoot it down."

Abkhazia is a sliver of land wedged between the Black Sea and the Caucasus mountains. It broke free from Tbilisi in a war after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and is now the focus of a bitter row between Russia and Georgia.

Georgia itself is at the centre of a tussle for influence between the United States and Russia over the Caucasus -- a volatile, mountainous region which hosts a major pipeline pumping oil from Asia to Europe.

A senior official at the Georgian Interior Ministry denied there had been any Georgian drones flying over Abkhazia on Thursday.