The file photo shows South Ossetia soldiers taking position in the village of Pristi, near the main South Ossetian town of Tshinvali.

Five European Union foreign ministers will travel to Georgia next week to try to help to cool tensions with Russia over the separatist region of Abkhazia, AFP quoted Slovenia as saying Friday.
Ministers of Slovenia--the current EU president--Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and Lavtia were expected in the team, according to diplomatic sources in Brussels.
“We want to check what the real situation is and prevent an escalation of tensions,“ said Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country currently holds the EU presidency.
“We want to prevent any unpleasant or dangerous thing from happening,“ he told a news conference.
Rupel will be one of the five. He would not confirm the others, but diplomatic sources in Brussels said the foreign ministers of Slovenia, Sweden, Poland and Lithuania would visit Georgia Monday in the first attempt by senior EU officials to mediate between the ex-Soviet republic and its estranged neighbor Russia.
In Riga, a spokeswoman said Latvia’s Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins would join the EU mission.
A Swedish diplomat meanwhile confirmed that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt would take part.
Mounting Tensions
Tensions have been mounting over the Georgian separatist region of Abkhazia, where Russia--seen as backing the separatists--has military forces.
They reached new heights Thursday as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili warned of a risk of war with Russia.
Rupel said Friday, “We need to clear (the situation) up as soon as possible, remove that possible danger, and try to contribute to a peaceful solution.“
“We are in permanent talks with Russia. The European Union is like a big buffer organization, an organization that seeks reasonable solutions“ to conflicts, he said.
The delegation would voice no preferences for any of the candidates in parliamentary elections to be held in Georgia on May 21, he said.
“The European Union has no intention of giving its support to one candidate or the other in the pre-election campaign,“ he said.
“That would be wrong.“

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In Riga, Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers on Friday urged the international community to head off the specter of conflict.
By “leaving Georgia alone at this moment, we allow the conflict to heat up,“ he said.
In Brussels, an EU spokeswoman said experts of the EU Satellite Centre in Spain would travel to Georgia to help investigate recent incidents involving Georgian drones over flying the rebel region of Abkhazia.

Spy Planes
The Abkhaz leadership has claimed the downing of five unmanned Georgian spy planes in the last two months, while Georgia has only acknowledged one such shooting, carried out it said by a Russian fighter jet.
Abkhaz officials said Friday that an unmanned Georgian spy plane it shot down the day before was carrying an air-to-air missile.
Officials showed debris to journalists that they said was recovered from where the drone crashed, consisting largely of unidentifiable metal fragments.
“An expert mission should leave this weekend, at the request of the UN department for peacekeeping operations,“ said Cristina Gallic, spokeswoman for EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana.
“The United Nations has called for expertise from the centre to interpret images of the incidents. We have agreed and have told the experts to go. The idea is to verify and to help clarify what happened,“ she explained.
“It’s a way to contribute in a concrete way to calming the situation,“ she added.

Serbs are to vote in snap elections Sunday to elect a government which will steer their country either toward closer ties with the West or away from it, said DPA.
The 6.75 million registered voters would chose the next cabinet from 22 party and coalition tickets, but eventually with only two choices at disposal - toward the European Union or away from it.
Leading in popularity surveys was the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), followed closely by President Boris Tadic’s pro-European Democratic Party (DS), with its partners G17.
SRS wants to turn Serbia to Russia, India and China. Its leader Tomislav Nikolic even said he was hoping that Moscow would some day launch an alliance of countries “response“ to EU influence.
But though far ahead from any other, neither of the top parties was tipped to win more than a third of the ballots cast, meaning that a three-way coalition would need to be forged for a majority.
Prime Minster Vojislav Kostunica’s Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) has grown increasingly hostile to the West in the wake of Kosovo’s split from Serbia and appears to be a natural ally for SRS.
Kostunica and Nikolic have both pledged revoke the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) Tadic signed with EU on behalf of Serbia two weeks ago, n a major step toward membership.

Barack Obama has almost tied Hillary Rodham Clinton in the crucial superdelegate count that she once dominated, with the slew of new support offering one of the clearest signs yet that her Democratic White House bid was nearly over, according to AP.
After a grueling months-long duel marked by bouts of acrimony and bitterness, the Democratic race entered its final weeks, if not days, with electoral math the deciding factor.
Clinton, unlikely to be able to erase Obama’s 1,859.5 to 1,698 lead in delegates, needs massive support from those superdelegates--party leaders free to vote as they chose--who have yet to declare their preference.
With Obama also unable to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to win the nomination based solely on elected delegates, that same group offered the key to his securing the party’s stamp.
The support of nine superdelegates Friday were the latest in a steady trickle since he crushed Clinton in North Carolina and narrowly lost Indiana on Tuesday. Clinton gained two superdelegates Friday.
Clinton, campaigning nearby in the Portland, Oregon, area, focused instead on the only real chance she had left to extend the life of her once-powerful candidacy: somehow derailing Obama.
For that, she turned to the issues. At a roundtable at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, she criticized Obama’s health care plan for promising universal coverage to children but not adults.

The Dalai Lama said Chinese officials were “respectful“ in meetings last week, but large differences remained over the causes of the recent unrest in Tibet.
In an interview with the German weekly ’Der Spiegel’, the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying that his representatives and Chinese officials agreed to hold a new round of formal talks “as soon as possible,“ following informal talks last weekend.
He added that a date would be fixed in the coming days. “There were large differences over both the cause and the nature of the recent unrest in Tibet,“ he said, according to the report. But “despite the differing opinions, both sides showed a readiness to achieve an agreement on a common way of proceeding in dealing with the problems at issue in Tibet.“
He added that “concrete proposals“ were made by both sides that could serve as “a basis for the formal talks during the next round.“ He did not elaborate. The Dalai Lama described the atmosphere at the talks as “pleasant ... the behavior of the other side not aggressive, but respectful.“
Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of inciting the recent anti-government protests in Tibet--an allegation the spiritual leader denies.
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet during a failed uprising in 1959, says he is seeking meaningful autonomy for Tibet rather than independence from Chinese rule.