Georgia Interior Ministry: Grenade story a "total lie"

[Bluebear]

As soon as U.S. President George Bush ended his visit to Tbilisi and returned to Washington, a number of international media, citing sources in the American special services, circulated reports of a bomb allegedly thrown at Bush during his speech at a huge rally in Tbilisi. The bomb did not explode, and Georgian experts gave assurances that it could not have exploded. In Tbilisi, they believe the goal of the perpetrator was to discredit Georgia in the eyes of the international community.
As Jonathon Cherry, an official spokesman for the American Secret Service, said on Tuesday, “after the president left Georgia, the Georgian authorities informed us that, according to intelligence available to them, during the president's speech in Tbilisi, a device resembling a hand grenade was thrown in the crowd no more than 100 feet <30 m> from the stage. They also informed us that this device hit someone in the crowd and then fell to the ground.”

Until the information appeared on Internet sites, no one in Georgia knew anything about the incident. Neither millions of viewers watching the rally live on TV nor the people standing in the square, including those in Bush's immediate vicinity, noticed any kind of device that flew towards the American president and landed 30 m away from him. But if something like that had happened, it certainly wouldn't have passed unnoticed.

Yesterday morning, Guram Donadze, the head of the Georgian Interior Ministry's press service, categorically denied information about a grenade thrown at the U.S. president, calling it a total lie. And at noon, Gela Bezhuashvili, the secretary of the National Security Council, held a special press conference.

http://www.kommersant.com/page.asp?id=576735

[susanna]

1. But THAT won't help *'s falling poll numbers!

Poor Georgians, they're probably thinking he gives a cr4p that they look bad or not...