Reports: Russian state scientist confirms uranium sent by Georgia was weapons-grade

MOSCOW (AP) _ Russia's foreign minister on Friday denounced the detention of a Russian man who allegedly tried to sell highly enriched uranium to Georgian agents, calling it a ``provocation.''

Friday, January 26th 2007, 6:32 am

By: News On 6

MOSCOW (AP) _ Russia's foreign minister on Friday denounced the detention of a Russian man who allegedly tried to sell highly enriched uranium to Georgian agents, calling it a ``provocation.''

A government scientist, meanwhile, confirmed that a sample of the uranium sent to Russia was weapons-grade but said it was too small to determine its origin, news agencies reported Friday.

Igor Shkabura, deputy director of the Bochvar Inorganic Materials Institute, said the uranium sent by Georgia ``could be used for military productions, including nuclear weapons,'' according to ITAR-Tass.

It was the first public comment by a named Russian official to claims by Georgia that it arrested and jailed a Russian man last year for trying to sell weapons-grade uranium to an agent posing as a rich foreign buyer.

The reports that emerged Wednesday, confirmed by U.S. officials, renewed concern about security at Russia's array of nuclear facilities. They aggravated already-high tensions between Russia and Georgia. Both countries have been at odds for years over the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two renegade regions of Georgia seeking either independence or absorption into Russia.

Georgian officials say their agent made contact with the man selling contraband uranium in South Ossetia, which is widely seen as a regional epicenter for smuggling.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement late Thursday saying the uranium sting highlighted the need for international observer missions in both regions, a proposal that Tbilisi has been pushing in recent months. Russia has peacekeepers in both regions, which have been under the control of unrecognized separatist governments since fighting ended in the mid-1990s.

The ministry statement said ``Georgia is far from politicizing these questions.''

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, criticized the man's detention.

``On the basis of the facts that I have at my disposal, I can say that this was a provocation,'' Lavrov was quoted by Interfax and RIA-Novosti as saying. ``We would prefer that this very problem had been resolved by experts.

``Enriched uranium ending up in the hands of a private individual who was beginning to sell it is a serious incident,'' he was quoted by ITAR-Tass as saying.

In December, a Georgian legislator suggested that a physics institute in Abkhazia could have been the source of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 that was used to fatally poison exiled Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko in London in November.

The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, one of Russia's most widely circulated, suggested Friday that ``Georgia and the United States are playing together against Russia and its allies.''

The newspaper offered the theory that Georgia and the United States decided to publicize the arrest now, even though it took place last year, because of the likelihood in the near future of a final proposal on the status of the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have said that if the international community approves independence for Kosovo, it would be a precedent supporting Abkhazia and South Ossetia formally splitting off from Georgia.

Russia, meanwhile, criticized security in Georgia's remote Pankisi Gorge region, claiming that small groups of rebels from neighboring Chechnya were sheltering there in preparation for new fighting in that Russian republic.

``Even though during the past three years we have not noted a breakthrough of Chechen rebels from Pankisi across the national border into Russian territory, we do not consider that such a possibility can be excluded,'' said Lt. Gen. Anatoly Zabrodin, deputy head of the Russian border guard service, according to ITAR-Tass.