MOSCOW, Oct. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A Russian military observer detained two days earlier by Georgian police has been released, the Russian embassy in Georgia said Sunday.

    Lieutenant Colonel Roman Boiko, a military observer at the joint peacekeeping force headquarters in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone, has been brought to the Russian embassy and will go to his base later, Yevgeny Ivanov, press attache at the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

    Boiko was taken into custody Friday by police in Gori, a town in western Georgia near the breakaway province of South Ossetia, and the Georgian Interior Ministry said he was questioned as a witness in a case it refused to elaborate.

    Russia had demanded Boiko's unconditional release and the two countries' foreign ministers discussed his release by telephone Saturday.

    Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia since the early 1990s, and Georgian authorities have repeatedly accused them of siding with separatists and vowed to bring the two breakaway provinces back under central control. Enditem