A meeting between the South Ossetian side’s representatives and the EUMM was held, reported the Deputy Special Representative for Post-Conflict Settlement Merab Chigoev.
According to Chigoev, “on 11 May we were called from the EUMM HQ and informed that an incident occurred to the EU military monitors in the vicinity to the village of Dvan at the Georgian-Ossetian borderline. “
”As we learnt later from our servicemen, on 8 May, several dozen armed Georgian troopers arrived by COBRA armored vehicles at the Georgian-Ossetian check-point in Dvan and attempted crossing the borderline. The troopers left only after a warning fire had been opened by our servicemen. They turned and went away. Our servicemen having mistakenly taken the EUMM observers, who arrived at the same check-point in a similar vehicle, for Georgian troopers, had hidden themselves behind concrete blocking, pointed their guns at them. Such actions by our servicemen seemed illegitimate to them, however, there was no shooting as such,” he stressed.
”In order to find out the circumstances, representatives of the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry and Armed Forces of the RF in SO went to the spot today. There we met with the EUMM representatives and South Ossetian servicemen with their duty station at the borderline. The data provided by the EUMM and that of our servicemen differ. This is related to the fact that the EUMM often use a type of armored vehicles which very much resemble the vehicles of Georgian troopers”, said Chigoev.
“We have clarified this to the EUMM representatives so that they would be moving by their own vehicles. If they have any business on the territory of RSO, they may contact our representatives through the hot line beforehand so that we would be able to promptly react to all possible incidents. In order to prevent similar incidents, we also suggested elaborating the mechanism to maintain contact between the EUMM observers and our servicemen. The promised to think this proposal over and do their best to put them into practice”, concluded Chigoev.
