Tensions on the ground in South Ossetia are still running high, the ministry's information and press department said. Despite resolutions adopted at the Commission's extraordinary session in Moscow July 14 and 15, the Georgian withdrawal of illegal armed formations from the Georgia-Ossetia conflict zone has not yet gotten underway. Georgian security forces deployed in the republic are reported to have made several attempts to prevent peacekeepers from acting in line with decisions agreed upon by all the parties to the conflict.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expresses the hope that the sides will live up to the commitments assumed within the framework of the Joint Control Commission, a quadripartite body comprised of officials representing Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia (a constituent republic of the Russian Federation).
At their July 14-15 session in Moscow, Commission members signed a protocol urging Georgia to implement a June 2 resolution, South Ossetian Co-Chair Boris Chochiev said. That resolution envisaged the withdrawal of all Georgian checkpoints and paramilitary groups that are unrelated to the peacekeeping effort.
"Georgia has not even started the implementation of the June 2 Protocol yet. But we'll see how the situation will be unfolding," Chochiev said. According to information available to the official, Russian and Georgian military observers who monitor developments on the ground in association with OSCE counterparts have spotted Georgian paramilitary groups in several villages across Ossetia.
The long-simmering Georgia-Ossetia conflict reached a boiling point this past May when the Georgian side placed eleven unauthorized checkpointsin the breakaway republic, Chochiev recalled. Now the number of such checkpoints has reached 24, he added.
The Joint Control Commission's June 2 resolution consolidates the sides' commitment to abstain from unilaterally deploying checkpoints in the Georgia-Ossetia conflict zone. It also envisages the replacement of the mobile checkpoint near the village of Tkviavi with a fixed checkpoint of the Joint Peacekeeping Force.
Alexander Kiknadze, commander of a peacekeeping battalion of Georgia's Interior Ministry, assured reporters in Tbilisi that monitoring of the area under the Georgian side's control had revealed no illegal armed formations. The OSCE observer group found nothing except shells in the village of Eredvi, whose service term had expired a long time ago, Kiknadze said. He described the situation in the region as "calm."
