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Georgian parliamentary commission says Russia started war in South Ossetia

TBILISI. Dec 18 (Interfax) - A temporary parliamentary commission investigating the events in August presented its conclusion on Thursday based on the evidence from 22 officials including Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and material from human rights organizations and the media.

The conclusion was presented live on TV by the chairman of the parliamentary commission Paata Davitaya.

The 200-page document includes photos, audio and video materials from which the parliamentarians concluded that the military action in Tskhinvali region was initiated by the Russian and South Ossetian sides.

"It was a well-planned Russian aggression," the document says.

The commission cites information on the shelling of Georgian villages between August 5 and 7.

"Regular Russian troops and tanks entered via the Roki tunnel the Dzhava district in the morning of August 7 when the Georgian armed forces were beyond the territory of the Tskhinvali region," the authors of the document say. The document quotes recordings of some phone conversations allegedly between representatives of South Ossetian authorities that are interpreted in such a way as if the convoy of Russian tanks had passed the Roki tunnel by the time of the conversations.

The parliamentary commission made some recommendations to the executive authorities on Georgian national security.

The authors of the document advised the Georgian Prosecutor General's Office to start an investigation on the statements of the former Georgian ambassador to Russia Erosi Kitsmarishvili. The Georgian MPs were dissatisfied with Kitsmarishvili statement that top Georgian officials had told him about the U.S. support of the military action in Tskhinvali region.

Earlier Mikheil Saakashvili admitted that the Georgian army was the first to start military action in South Ossetia but this action was "justified and adequate," he said.

"The question is not why Georgia began the military action, we admit that we started these actions, but whether there was any other option when they began to kill our citizens?" Mikheil Saakashvili told the parliamentary session on November 28.