WASHINGTON - The United States on Wednesday called a suspected aerial rocket strike on Georgia a provocation, and said it was talking to Russia and Georgia to get to the bottom of the incident.
"There have been previous attacks and whoever was responsible for this particular attack, these sort of provocations need to end," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
"We are still doing the analysis. We have talked to the Georgians a little bit, we have also talked to Russians, both in Moscow and here, and we are still doing an analysis on the facts that we have," he explained.
The United States wanted all relevant parties to cooperate fully with the investigations by the Georgian government and the pan-European security watchdog, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE), he said.
The OSCE called Wednesday for "an inclusive investigation" with "participation of all implicated parties."
Although couched in diplomatic language, it appeared to point at Russia, since Georgia is the country promoting the investigation.
Russia hotly denies Georgian accusations that one of its war planes fired a missile Monday into a field near a Georgian village on the edge of South Ossetia, a separatist region mostly controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
The missile did not explode and no one was injured, but the incident sharply raised tensions between Moscow and the pro-Western government in Georgia.
Georgia`s Foreign Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said Wednesday it would ask the UN Security Council to meet in emergency session on the alleged bombing.
Moscow suggested that Tbilisi staged the raid itself to sabotage peace talks with South Ossetian rebels.
"The proximity of this attack to Georgia`s separatist South Ossetia region and the violation of Georgia`s airspace over the zone of conflict underscore the pressing need for progress toward peaceful resolution of the South Ossetia conflict," McCormack said.
The United States, he said, encouraged Russia and Georgia to advance efforts to this end in a "constructive spirit," even in the face of the latest attack.
08/09/2007 00:47 GMT