Tributes, accusation mark Georgia war anniversary

TBILISI/TSKHINVALI, Georgia (Reuters) - Silent tribute and bitter accusation marked the first anniversary on Friday of Georgia's war with Russia over breakaway South Ossetia, where unresolved tensions threaten new hostilities.

The former Soviet republic launched an assault on South Ossetia late on August 7 after days of clashes with separatists and years of escalating tension with Moscow, drawing a devastating Russian counter-strike that ended on August 12.

The war killed at least 390 civilians and at its height displaced more than 100,000. An unfulfilled ceasefire pact, sporadic gunfire and the withdrawal of monitors from pro-Western Georgia's two rebel regions keep alive the risk of renewed war.

The anniversary laid bare the conflicting narratives of the war. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the target of months of opposition protests against his rule, was defiant.

"On August 7, 2008, the Russian plan to annihilate our independence, our statehood and our democracy was brutally enacted," he said in a speech under heavy rain in Gori, a town several kilometers from South Ossetia which was bombed in the war.

"I call on the free world, to our friends: Help us secure peace. Help us to prevent a new invasion."

Bonfires blazed, flags were lowered and people stood in silence in a series of competing memorials in Georgia and its pro-Russian South Ossetia region of some 60,000 people.

Russia had put troops in South Ossetia on alert, accusing Georgia of "provocations." Youth groups in Russia planned to join South Ossetians in the scarred rebel capital Tskhinvali in lighting candles to mark the start of the Georgian assault.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the assault resulted in "huge losses of human life."

"The Russian Federation had to respond quickly," he told Russian NTV, "thus saving hundreds and thousands of lives and restoring peace in the Caucasus, which was at serious risk."

Georgia says Russia fueled separatism and invaded before Tbilisi acted, a charge Moscow dismissed. The invasion, Georgia says, was long planned by its old Soviet master, punishment for Georgia's pro-Western politics and bid to join NATO.

RECOGNITION

The war rattled Western confidence in oil and gas routes running through Georgia and skirting South Ossetia, which like the rebel Black Sea region of Abkhazia threw off Georgian rule in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity urged the world to recognize the territory as independent.

"The international community should condemn the aggressor, as well as those supplying them with arms," he said.

Diplomats say the August 7 assault, which Georgia says it launched to halt rebel shelling, was a huge error of judgment.

Concentrated in the North Caucasus after annual exercises, Russian tanks rolled over the border and on into Georgia proper, routing the Georgian army. Jets bombed from clear summer skies.

Georgian shelling of Tskhinvali was indiscriminate, rights groups said. Militias followed in the wake of the Russian advance, looting and burning ethnic Georgian villages. Some 30,000 mainly ethnic Georgians remain displaced.

"What kind of peaceful relationship could there be when someone wants to destroy you?" said Alan, a South Ossetian fighter who declined to give his surname.

The West condemned Russia's counter-strike as "disproportionate," and the European Union secured a ceasefire.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states backed by thousands of Russian troops, despite the ceasefire requiring all sides to pull back to pre-war positions.

The EU and NATO froze talks with energy giant Russia, but a year later they are back on. U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to "reset" relations with Moscow to secure cooperation on issues from arms control to the worsening war in Afghanistan.

Russia has blocked the continuation of OSCE and U.N. monitoring missions. The EU is alone with 240 monitors deployed after the war, but who are denied access to either rebel region.

In the latest trade in accusations, South Ossetia said Georgia fired a rocket-propelled grenade over the boundary, and Tbilisi said five Georgian farmers had been "abducted" near the rebel region. Neither claim could be verified.

(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Tbilisi and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Writing by Matt Robinson; Editing by Dominic Evans)