Officials in Georgia have been making statements lately, in which they misrepresent events in South Ossetia by citing wrong causes for the recent outburst of the conflict between the central Georgian government and authorities of the breakaway republic, the ministry says in a press release. They try to shift responsibility for their own blunders onto South Ossetian authorities, accusing these latter of standing in the way of reforms undertaken by Georgia's "new democratic leadership."
Officials in Georgia propose extending the mandate of the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation to the whole of South Ossetia, increasing the number of OSCE observers and deploying some of them on the border with Russia.
The Russian government believes such initiatives are impossible to translate into reality and that they divert attention from realistic solutions, ones that could bring an end to the ongoing escalation of tension and restore the negotiating process in line with the international law, the press release says.
The efficiency of the OSCE mission's operations in Georgia can really be raised not by increasing its numerical strength, but by making sure that it acts in an unbiased manner and in line with its mandate. The essence of the OSCE mandate is to promote the creation of a broad political framework with a view to facilitating reconciliation between the conflicting sides, including through involvement in the work of the Joint Control Commission [it is comprised of officials representing Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia], the Russian Foreign Ministry points out in its press release.
This approach, set forth by the Russian delegation at the OSCE Permanent Council's session in Vienna on June 29 this year, was supported in principle by its other participants, the ministry says. The Council then called on the conflicting sides to exercise restraint and comply with resolutions of the Joint Control Commission, notably the July 15 resolution envisaging the dismantling of the checkpoints unlawfully installed by the Georgian side in the conflict zone and the deployment there of military units and hardware.
