MOSCOW, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The leader of the breakaway region at the heart of the Georgia-Russia conflict said on Monday he would ask Moscow to station a military base there and rejected the presence of international observers.
South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity told Reuters that Russian citizens in his Moscow-backed region, which broke away from Tbilisi's rule after a war in the 1990s, needed protection from Georgia.
"We will ask the leadership of the Russian Federation for there to be a Russian military base on the territory of South Ossetia because Russian citizens live here," the 43-year-old leader of the small province in the Caucasus mountains said.
"It is their decision," he said in a telephone interview from the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.........
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