Georgia demands Russian apology over spy plane

Soldiers march during an Independence Day military parade in Tbilisi May 26, 2008.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia demanded on Tuesday that Russia apologize after a U.N. report said a Russian air force jet had shot down a Georgian spy plane last month, but Moscow said it did not trust the report's conclusions.

"Georgia protests and demands from Russia an apology and compensation for the cost of the drone," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze told reporters after Russia's envoy was summoned to his ministry.

Russia denies any involvement in shooting down the unmanned aircraft, which was brought down on April 20 over Abkhazia, a Moscow-backed separatist region of Georgia.

Georgia's leaders, who have angered Russia by trying to join NATO, have described the incident as an act of aggression.

The U.N. report strengthened Georgian accusations -- backed by some of its Western allies -- that Russia is stoking tension in the volatile region, scene of a separatist war in the 1990s.

Russia's ambassador in Tbilisi, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, was summoned to the Georgian Foreign Ministry earlier on Tuesday and handed a note of protest over the incident.

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had no issue with the U.N. team that compiled the report, but it believed the information it had used was "tendentious and not objective".

"Overall, the quality of these investigations does not inspire confidence," said a ministry statement, which was posted on its Internet site www.mid.ru.

Abkhazia and another rebel region, South Ossetia, are constant sources of tension in the stormy relationship between Moscow and Tbilisi.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday he wanted constructive ties with Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told officials in Tbilisi on Tuesday that he wanted to talk. "Russia holds the key (to a solution). We need to find a way out from the current deadlock, together with Russia," Saakashvili said. "I'd like to try (to find a way out) with Russia's new president."

ENERGY CORRIDOR

The dispute over Georgia's rebel regions also feeds instability in the South Caucasus region, an important transit route for oil from the Caspian Sea to world markets.

The U.N. report, released on Monday, said radar records and video footage from the downed aircraft showed it was shot down by a missile fired from a Russian aircraft.

The U.N. report also said Georgia was violating a ceasefire agreement by flying reconnaissance flights over Abkhazia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said through an interpreter in Copenhagen that the drone incident was the latest in a long line of "provocations" by Georgia's leaders. He said Georgia had failed to adhere to agreements with Russia.

"Russia has complied fully and continues to comply with what we have agreed with the Georgian side," Lavrov said.

"We hope that countries that have influence on Georgia will put that influence into effect so that Georgia lives up to its commitments... rather than continue provoking Georgia and prompting it to gain admission into NATO in the hope that this will somehow solve all the problems that Georgia has."

NATO offered Georgia and fellow ex-Soviet state Ukraine eventual membership of the alliance at a summit last month but did not give them a timetable.

Moscow says that if the two become members they could be used as a bridgehead to move NATO troops and missiles right up to Russia's borders, compromising its security.

(Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Gelu Sulugiuc in Copenhagen; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Tim Pearce)