Moscow has denied Tbilisi's claim that a Russian warplane flew into Georgian territory on August 6 and dropped a missile on a village.
The expert group, consisting of air force officials and missile specialists from the three EU states - all of which have strained diplomatic relations with Moscow - released an official report saying: "Georgian airspace was violated three times on 6 Aug 2007 by aircraft flying from Russian airspace."
The report said the missile was "launched towards the Gori radar site at a range of approximately 10 km from the radar site," and that "if the target was the radar site, the missile was launched at near minimum range."
According to Tblisi, the missile was discovered in the village of Tsitelubani, 40 miles northwest of the Georgian capital and near to the border with breakaway South Ossetia. The 1,400-pound missile has become the latest source of tension between Georgia and its former Soviet ally Russia.
The international experts said the plane launched a Kh-58U air-to-ground antiradar missile made in Russia, but did not confirm that the plane was Russian.
After Georgia announced its find, Russian authorities denied they had made any flights in the area, and a group of Russian experts sent to the region said photographs of missile parts provided by Georgia showed that the missile could not be either Russian or Soviet. South Ossetia's leadership said the plane was in service with the Georgian Air Force, and had violated the province's airspace.
The Russian Embassy in Tbilisi said on Tuesday: "One of the photographs presented by the Georgian side has a fragment of a device with an inscription in a foreign language. However, is it widely known that in line with laws of the U.S.S.R. and the Russian Federation, the installation of foreign, imported devices onto missiles is prohibited. That is to say, this unit could not have appeared either on a Soviet or on a Russian-made missile."
Moscow, which Tbilisi has accused of backing separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian republic, has called the incident a "new provocation" staged by Tbilisi to destabilize the region.
