Tbilisi, 2 June 2000 (RFE/RL) -- A search today continued for five UN staffers who yesterday might have been abducted by unidentified attackers in the Georgia-controlled part of Abkhazia. The two Danish military observers, two British mine experts and a local interpreter had been on patrol in the Kodorski Gorge area, when radio contact with their headquarters in Sukhumi was cut off.
Abkhazia, a former autonomous Georgian republic, declared indpendence in mid-1992, prompting a conflict with Tbilisi. Georgian troops were forced to withdraw in 1993, and the UN has been supervising a ceasefire for the last six years.