TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE USSR MR M. GORBACHOV

Mr President,

In the recent time, when the ways of conflict resolution in Shida Kartli (former South Ossetia) have been determined, the internal troops of the Ministry of Interior of the USSR deployed in this region have started military operations against Georgian population.

On 14 November the units of the Internal Troops of the USSR, together with Ossetian extremists, conducted intensive fire using grenade launchers, armored vehicles and missiles during 7 hours in the direction of Georgian villages Upper Nikozi and Lower Nikozi. The houses were devastated, there are people injured in the course of attack.

The Government of the Republic of Georgia expresses its firm protest against unlawful acts of the Internal Forces of the Ministry of Interior of the USSR and finds such punitive acts as continuation of the aggression against sovereign Georgia.

If the said troops still use the arms against peaceful population, the burden of responsibility for the further exacerbation of the conflict vests on you.

The President of the Republic of Georgia Z. Gamsakhurdia

Tbilisi, 17 November 1991

(Newspaper “Abkhazetis Khma”, /Voice of Abkhazia/, # 186, 20 November 1991)