Georgia: Russian Jet Fired Missile

Georgian officials examine pieces of a missile, which landed just 25 meters (yards) from a house at the edge of Shavshvebi village in Georgia on Tuesday at this image taken from TV screen broadcast on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007. Georgian officials said that a Russian plane violated the nation's airspace late Monday, Aug. 6, 2007, and fired a missile which landed near a Georgian village, but did not explode. (AP Photo/ APTN ) (AP)

Russia's air force has denied that its planes crossed into Georgia's airspace.

Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, said an unidentified aircraft dropped the missile after flying over South Ossetia and coming under fire from the ground. Kulakhmetov suggested the plane came from Georgia.

Officials of the separatist government in South Ossetia, which has received backing from Moscow, accused Georgia of dropping the missile.

Russia's Foreign Ministry suggested that Georgia had concocted the incident.

Moscow views the event as an "attempt to derail positive trends in Russian-Georgian relations and exacerbate the situation with the settlement of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict." It said Moscow would insist on a swift investigation.

The U.S. statement by McCormack, which carefully avoided naming a responsible party, urged Russia and Georgia to settle differences over South Ossetia and called for increased OSCE monitoring of the region.

"The proximity of this attack to Georgia's separatist South Ossetia region and the violation of Georgia's airspace over the zone of conflict underscore the pressing need for progress toward peaceful resolution of the South Ossetia conflict," McCormack said.

Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the upper house of Russia's Parliament, accused Tbilisi of fanning "anti-Russian hysteria" to deflect attention from domestic problems, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Relations between Russia and Georgia have been strained since Saakashvili was elected president in 2004 and made clear his intentions to move the former Soviet republic closer to the West.

Georgia has accused Russia of backing separatists; Moscow, in turn, has accused Tbilisi of fomenting tensions in the rebel provinces. Georgia has repeatedly accused Russia of violating its airspace _ claims Russia has invariably denied.

Earlier this year, Georgia said Russian helicopters fired on its territory in the Kodori Gorge, a volatile area on the fringe of Abkhazia. The two nations exchanged accusations at the time, but a subsequent U.N. report said it was not clear who had fired at Georgian territory.

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Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this story.