Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia overwhelmingly endorsed its split with Tbilisi on Monday in a referendum Georgia's prime minister said was part of a Russian campaign to stoke a war, according to Reuters. The prime minister's stark language was tempered though by the removal before the vote of the hawkish Georgian defence minister, the strongest sign yet that Tbilisi wants to ease a bitter standoff with the separatists and their Russian backers. Election officials in South Ossetia said 99 percent of the roughly 50,000 voters said "Yes" to separation from Tbilisi -- a defiant reaffirmation of a split that has existed since a war in the early 1990s. In an interview with Reuters, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli said the vote was a "provocation" and part of a Kremlin strategy to ratchet up tensions in the region. "They are recently portraying us as if we are going to start a war there, which has never been our intention," he said on a visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels. "Their recent rhetoric and action are making us draw the conclusion that they themselves are getting prepared for a war." A sliver of land in the Caucasus mountains, South Ossetia has no international recognition but is propped up by Moscow. One of the ex-Soviet Union's "frozen conflicts," it has become increasingly combustible since Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in 2004 vowing to restore control. Local people in the separatists' capital, Tskhinvali, celebrated the win for the "Yes" vote by driving around the town waving the South Ossetian flag and the flags of Russia and Abkhazia, another Georgian breakaway region. "South Ossetia's independence must continue," separatist leader Eduard Kokoity said. "They (the Georgian government) should listen to the wishes of the South Ossetian people." Georgia and the West have called the referendum illegal. Russia says it should be respected but has issued no reaction to the result. The European Union's Finnish presidency said in a statement it did not recognise the vote, which "did not contribute to efforts for peaceful conflict resolution." Saakashvili proffered an olive branch on Friday by moving Irakli Okruashvili from the defence ministry to the post of Economy Minister. Okruashvili's belligerent talk, like his promise earlier this year to toast the New Year in Tskhinvali, has alarmed Moscow and the separatists and made Georgia's Western allies uncomfortable. "The removal of the defence minister, could, if anything, have a beneficial effect because he has come to embody in the minds of many a rather hardline Georgian approach to resolving the conflict," a Western diplomat told Reuters. Georgia has accused Moscow of effectively annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia, pointing to the Russian passports issued to most people in the two regions and the presence of international peacekeepers who are almost all Russian. The Kremlin says it is Tbilisi which is dragging the conflict towards bloodshed by building up its military on the separatists' borders. A Kremlin spokesman was not immediately available to respond to Nogaideli's remarks. Georgia's expulsion last month of four Russian soldiers it accused of spying triggered a new escalation in the dispute with Moscow. Russia hit back by severing transport links with its ex-Soviet neighbour. In a parallel presidential election in South Ossetia on Sunday, Kokoity was re-elected with 96 percent of the vote.
