Rosbalt, 06/09/2002, 14:09 Georgia Accuses Russia and US over Terrorism Connection TBILISI, September 6. At a press conference Nika Laliashvili, head of the public relations service of the Georgian State Security Ministry, described the American CBS television company's reports that Americans discovered "a Georgian trace" while investigating of the terrorist acts of September 11 last year as "part of the Russian information war" against Georgia.
According to a report by RIA Novosti's correspondent, Laliashvili stated that on Thursday the State Security Ministry contacted competent representatives of American special services, who "did not confirm those reports". At the same time, according to Nika Laliashvili, the American representatives assumed that the facts were misinterpreted.
The State Security Ministry's representative stated that "the Georgian side did not conceal that at that period several ethnic Arabs were staying in the Pankisi Gorge and maintained direct communications with the terrorist Al-Qaeda organization". Laliashvili reported that "they might have enjoyed the terrorist act and such a call might have taken place". According to him, "the anti-criminal and anti-terrorist operation in the Pankisi Gorge was carried out against those very people". On Wednesday night the American CBS television company reported that 15 minutes after the passenger aircraft hijacked by kamikaze terrorists hit the Pentagon building in Washington the National Security Agency, in charge of radio and electronic surveillance, intercepted a telephone conversation of one of Al-Qaeda's representatives in Afghanistan with an unidentified interlocutor in the territory of Georgia.
According to CBS, in the course of the conversation the caller informed his recipient that he had got, as he put it, "good news" and added that "the next target would follow suit". According to the television company's report, CIA analysts were of the opinion that it was evidence that both interlocutors knew of the acts being carried out by international terrorists, which resulted in the death of over 3,000 people. The analysis of passenger lists of the four aircraft hijacked on September 11 revealed a number of Al-Qaeda members and determined with certainty that Osama bin Laden's network was responsible for the heinous crime committed.
¿ RIA Novosti
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