The Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday lashed out at a resolution adopted by the Georgian parliament, which demanded withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

"The Russian side regards the resolution as a provocative move, aimed at fanning tension, breaking the existing negotiation formats, and annulling the legal basis for the peaceful settlement of the conflicts on Georgian territory," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on its website.

Russia thought its peacekeepers "are playing an important role in the effort to settle the Georgia-South Ossetia conflict", Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated on Wednesday, commenting on the resolution of the Georgian parliament.

The Georgian resolution assesses most negatively the role played by the Russian peacemaking forces deployed in Abkhazia and in the former South-Ossetian Autonomous District of Georgia, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.

"The peacekeepers are working in keeping with the mandate, which they got from the Commonwealth of Independent States and which the United Nations had approved," Lavrov underlined.

In his view, there should build up trust between the sides involved in the Georgia-South-Ossetia conflict, and it is Russian peacekeepers that are taking steps to help the sides concerned to lay the foundation for the complete settlement of the conflicts.

The Georgian parliament unanimously passed on Tuesday a resolution "On the Situation in the Conflict Regions of Georgia and the Peacekeeping Operations There".

The document claims that "Russia is playing a certain role in the attempts to provoke, conserve and leave the conflicts unsettled, although it is a country, which bears official responsibility for their settlement", said the Itar-Tass.

The parliament authorized the Georgian government to "step up the talks with Russia, with the international organizations and the countries concerned, and determined to demand the withdrawal next year of all the peacemakers from the conflict zones "if their work proves negative".

Source: Xinhua