Two Germans among UN monitors kidnapped in Georgia

BERLIN (AFP) Jun 05, 2003
A small group of UN monitors and observers kidnapped early Thursday on Georgia's border with breakaway Abkhazia are believed to have been seized by Abkhazis, German Defence Minister Peter Struck said.

The German defence ministry said earlier that two Germans were among those taken hostage.

"Apparently they are Abkhaz kidnappers," Struck told reporters in Berlin.

"We are trying to determine the fate of our soldiers through the means we have at our disposal."

A Georgian official told AFP in the capital Tbilisi earlier that three UN observers had been seized by unknown assailants with an interpreter and four Russian peacekeepers as they patrolled a buffer zone separating Georgian and Abkhaz rebel forces.

Germany has 11 troops, some of them medics, with the UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG), which was set up in 1993 to supervise the ceasefire between Georgia and Abkhazia.

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