The sixth round of the Geneva discussion is ongoing. As the Special Representative for POst-Conflict Settlement Boris Chochiev told IA RES on the phone, "the discussion is difficult".
"The first working group is discussing security issues. Unfortunately, the document guaranteeing non-use of force has not been approved", said Chochiev. According to him, the discussion of this document started already in May. "In accordance with the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan guaranteeing security of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, we have suggested variants of agreement on non-use of force, however, we have not seen any proposals of the kind from the Geneva Co-Chairmen. In return, the Georgian side has presented an extremely cynical draft agreement on non-use of force between Georgia and Russia. These drafts are under discussion now."
"We have firmly raised the issue (which is now being discussed) on the format of the Geneva discussion, about the Chairmen, since the UN is no longer present in Abkhazia and the OSCE has been withdrawn from both Georgia and South Ossetia. Today, we have raised the issue of revising the Chairmanship format at these meetings", said Chochiev.
As to the possibility to organize the OSCE presence in South Ossetia, as an independent state, Boris Chochiev stated that "today, this problem will be discussed in Vienna. We have confirmed that if the OSCE did not agree on opening its mission in South Ossetia as in an independent state, we would be insisting on revision of the OSCE's Co-Chairmanship in Geneva and the organization's participation in the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM)". Boris Chochiev reminded that the SOuth Ossetian side refused to participate in the last two IPRM meetings, mainly because of the unsettled chairmanship issue.
"Today, we have suggested the third compromise variant to have South Ossetia and Georgia chairing these meetings. They declined this proposal as well, referring to the unconditional chair of the EU. We cannot accept this. The second reason for our refusal to participate is that we know nothing about the fate of our citizens abducted by the Georgian special services. And the most important is that the document on non-use of force has not been signed yet." Boris Chochiev stressed that during the meeting, in response to the SOuth Ossetian Delegation's statement that Georgia continued preparations for an new aggression, the US. representative Matthew Bryza stated that he "sees no evidences of Georgia's preparing for a new war." "Bryza admitted that the USA is actively helping Georgia to remilitarize and reequip its army, so that Georgia would have a civilized and equipped army. It looks like the USA is equipping the Georgian army to be able to kill our citizens in a new war in a "civilized manner", said Boris Chochiev.
"The meeting is still ongoing in Geneva. The next meeting has been scheduled for Spetember", he concluded.
