"I am ready to sign a memorandum that will make it binding on both sides to abstain from the use or threat of force. No one wants war here. The people are tired of this war," Eduard Kokoity said.
A meeting of the Joint Control Commission on the settlement of the conflict between Georgia and its breakaway province of South Ossetia, scheduled for August 9-10 in Tbilisi, was canceled over outstanding disagreements, specifically the failure of the Georgian side to provide security guarantees to the South Ossetian delegation following an aircraft incident on August 6.
Georgian Minister for Conflict Resolution David Bakradze said on Tuesday that on the night of August 6 two Russian Su-25 aircraft illegally entered Georgian airspace and fired a missile at a radar station near the city of Gori. The missile did not explode and the radar was not damaged.
Russia denied Georgia's allegation, and South Ossetian authorities said Georgian planes had been sighted illegally entering the province's airspace, and accused Tbilisi of dropping a missile on South Ossetia's territory.
South Ossetia, which declared its independence from Georgia following a bloody conflict that left hundreds dead in 1991-1992, is a sensitive issue in relations between Georgia and Russia. Georgian authorities are seeking to bring it back under their control, and have accused Russia, which has peacekeepers in the area, of encouraging separatist elements.
Georgia has set up a working group comprising Georgian officials and members of South Ossetia's Tblisi-installed "alternative government," and says its offer will be based on the autonomy model of South Tyrol, an ethnically-mixed German-Italian region.
The situation in the conflict zone recently deteriorated over damaged water pipelines leading to South Ossetia, which left 70 villages and 44,000 hectares of farmland without water. Gunfire was exchanged when Georgia started building a road in the area without consulting local authorities. Russian peacekeepers stopped the construction and urged consultations between the two sides.
In 1990-1992 armed conflict followed South Ossetian's secession from newly independent Georgia, in Georgian capital Tbilisi. South Ossetia's officials have repeatedly called for its recognition by Moscow, with subsequent admission to the Russian Federation.
