MOSCOW, February 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian lawmakers criticized Friday the Georgian parliament's February 15 resolution on the expulsion of Russian peacekeepers from the breakaway province of South Ossetia, calling it destructive.
Russia's upper house of parliament said the resolution, ordering Russian troops out of South Osssetia, was "a destructive step undermining the search for a workable political solution" to the long-running conflict between Georgia and the self-proclaimed republic.
Russian legislators also characterized Georgian authorities' increasingly frequent anti-Russian statements and actions as "myopic and meeting neither the interests of a good-neighborly relationship between the two countries nor Georgia's own national interest."
Russia's peacekeeping contingent was deployed in South Ossetia in the early 1990s to ensure the implementation of ceasefire agreements after a war during which the rebellious region had broken away from Georgia's control.
Georgia's pro-Western leadership has repeatedly accused Moscow of siding with South Ossetian separatists and supplying them with arms.
