TBILISI, Oct 12 (Reuters) - West Indian pop band Boney-M will be back in the former Soviet Union on Saturday to hold a frontline concert in a breakaway region of Georgia. The band -- which had huge hits in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s -- will be paid by Georgia's government to play in a village it controls in the separatist region of South Ossetia, a Georgian spokeswoman said on Friday. The concert will be in Tamarasheni, a village of around 500 people in the middle of the conflict. Gun battles erupt regularly in the region despite a ceasefire. Thousands died in a war when South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Boney-M can fill stadiums in the former Soviet Union, where snappy disco songs such as "Daddy Cool", "Rasputin" and "Rivers of Babylon" were among the few pop tunes approved by the ruling Communist party. The quartet officially split in the mid-1980s and two bands now perform under the same name, led by singers from the original group. The rundown village where the concert will be held on Saturday is scarred by bullets. Only Russian peacekeepers and tanks separate it from the rebels' capital Tskhinvali, a short walk away. But Georgia's Pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili, is pouring money into Tamarasheni to give it a makeover and taunt the rebels, who receive covert financial support from Russia. "The administration of South Ossetia has paid for this concert," said Iya Barateli, a spokeswoman for Georgian side, declining to specify the sum or security arrangements for Saturday's concert. Georgia wants to join both NATO and the European Union and is at the centre of a power struggle between the West and Russia over the Caucasus region which hosts a pipeline pumping oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe.
