Moscow - Russia's Federal secret service says it has caught a Georgian spy who was working with rebel groups in the Russian Caucasus, news agencies reported Friday. "A agent of Georgian secret services, a Russian citizen born in Georgia, has been apprehended," an unnamed FSB source told Interfax, adding that this "confirms the involvement of Georgian secret services in disruptive terrorist activity in the North Caucasus."
Itar-Tass news agency also quoted an FSB source who specified the agent had been captured "some time ago" and identified him as a 34-year-old man from Russia's war-torn Chechen republic.
A spokesman for Georgia's Interior Ministry denied the man was a Georgian agent Friday.
"This is pure disinformation aimed at discrediting Georgia," the spokesman Shota Utyashvili was quoted as saying.
News of the capture further escalates tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi over Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia recently increased its peacekeeping troops in the region to counter what it says was Georgia militarization of the border, but Tbilisi turned to the West for support against Russia's "efforts to annex its territory."
"In spite of the repeated statements from the leadership of Georgia and their Western allies," the FSB source told Itar-Tass. The area "is again being used as a base for terrorists who are active in the North Caucasus."
The suspected spy's job had been to set up contact between Georgia's intelligence service and an active cell of Islamic rebels in Russia, Interfax reported.
"For this task, the agent many times received financial rewards from Georgia's intelligence services paid in American dollars. The payments were made in personal meetings and bank transfers," the source told the news agency.
Frayed Georgian-Russian relations have long led to sparks in Abkhazia, the autonomy of which has been defended by Russian peacekeepers since a ceasefire ended a civil war in 1994.
But rivalries between Moscow and Tbilisi have grown over Russia's objection over its post-Soviet neighbour's bid for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
