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Moscow: Russia's security service reportedly onThursday said it had detained a man accused of spying for Georgia, adding to escalating tension between the ex-Soviet republics.
A Georgian official denied the allegation and called it part of a Russian "policy of provocation" aimed at Georgia, which is the focus of a struggle for regional influence between Moscow and the West.
Russia's relations with Georgia are badly strained as the small country's US-allied leader courts the West.
Tensions have increased sharply lately over Russia's increasing support for Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia province, a lynchpin in Moscow's efforts to thwart Georgia's drive for Nato membership.
North Caucasus unrest
An unidentified Russian Federal Security Service official identified the alleged agent as Ramzan Turkoshvili, a Georgian-born Russian citizen, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, cast the detention as proof of Georgian support for militants operating in Russia's restive North Caucasus, which includes war-scarred Chechnya. The FSB official said Turkoshvili, 34, was recruited by Georgian intelligence officers working with Zelimkhan Khangashvili, an alleged militant leader who has taken refuge in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, across the border from Chechnya, ITAR-Tass said.
The official was quoted as saying Khangashvili's group was involved in a 2004 attack in Russia's Ingushetia province, adjacent to Chechnya, that left nearly 100 people dead, many of them police personnel.
The official claimed Georgian intelligence paid Turkoshvili to establish contacts with militants in the North Caucasus and help Georgia finance them, ease their movement and gather information about potential recruits among Russian servicemen and officials.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili denied the espionage accusation and called it "a continuation of Russia's policy of provocation toward Georgia, which has taken a particularly acute form recently".
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