Russia hopes that the truth regarding allegedly shooting down Georgia's unmanned spy plane will be established in the end, Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
The UN mission in Georgia said on Monday a Russian air force plane was responsible for shooting down the Georgian drone over Abkhazia on April 20, citing evidences of radar records and video footage.
"The Russian side has closely studied the UN report. It is noteworthy that the mission qualifies the reconnaissance missions by unmanned aircraft as military operations, and this runs counter to the Moscow agreement of 1994," the ministry was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.
"The quality of the inquiries is questionable in general," the ministry said. "A whole range of conclusions in the report raises questions. We do not doubt the UN experts' professionalism, but have no confidence in the evidence provided -- video footage and some radar recordings," the ministry said.
The ministry said Georgia chose not to "risk" handing over the footage to Russia for studies and Georgian radar recordings did not correspond to Russian data.
Following the UN report, Tbilisi on Tuesday demanded that Russia apologize over the shooting down of the plane in its territory, but Moscow denied any involvement in the incident.
Speaking in Denmark on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Georgia to hand over to the UN Security Council the video tape showing a fighter jet shooting down an unmanned Georgian spy plane over Abkhazia.
Russian support for Abkhazia has been a source of tension between Moscow and Tbilisi.
Russia has been increasing troop deployment in Abkhazia since tension flared up over the shooting down of the spy plane.
Separatists in Abkhazia declared independence following bloody conflicts with Georgian government forces in the 1990s and an uneasy cease-fire is being monitored by CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Collective Peacekeeping Forces.
The peacekeeping forces, made up of Russian servicemen, were first deployed in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone in 1994.
Source:Xinhua
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