Georgia is developing a package of proposals to alter the current peacekeeping format with a stage-by-stage withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers, replacing them with a Georgian and Abkhaz police force, comprising officers trained by European instructors.
Georgia is also proposing the police force be subordinate to the OSCE directive instead of CIS mandate.
Nikoloz Rurua, a deputy head of the Georgian parliamentary committee on defense and security, said: "We will propose that Russia join our initiative [to change the format] with all its energy and possibilities."
Rurua said Russia will no longer have a monopoly in the conflict zone regarding peacekeepers. "This is our sovereign decision. If [Russia] disagrees with our position, these forces will be declared occupiers," he told journalists.
The head of a temporary parliamentary commission on restoration of territorial integrity, Shota Malashkhiya, said Russia was a party to the conflict, and therefore did not have the right to vote on Abkhazia in the UN Security Council.
He also said Georgia was entitled to request the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers under CIS documents adopted earlier.
A Russian peacekeeper sustained gunshot wounds and another was stabbed in Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia, peacekeepers and national media reported on Wednesday.
A deputy commander for the Collective CIS Peacekeeping Force, which has been deployed in the conflict zone since the 1990s, said one peacekeeper had been stabbed "as a result of hooliganism by yet unknown persons" adding the man's life was not in danger.
In a separate incident, Georgia's Rustavi-2 TV channel said that a Russian peacekeeper had sustained gunshot wounds during a quarrel with other peacekeepers on Tuesday.
"The injured soldier was admitted to a hospital in the town of Zugdidi [western Georgia]. He was given initial medical treatment, and was then taken away," a member of staff at the hospital was quoted as saying.
A rotation of Russian peacekeepers in Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia has started and will continue until June 2, an aide to the Ground Forces commander said on Tuesday.
Abkhazia is one of Georgia's two breakaway de facto independent republics, along with South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in the republics since the 1990s. Moscow recently bolstered the number of its peacekeepers in Abkhazia in response to Georgian troop buildup, but said the increase was still within previously agreed limits of 3,000 soldiers.
