President Eduard Kokoity held a press-conference for journalists of western media who arrived in South Ossetia on 12 February to see the political and social situation on the ground as well as with the process of removal of consequences of Georgian aggression.
Rehabilitation works at sites in Tskhinval destroyed during the Georgian aggression. The kindergarten #13 in Ostaev street was seriously damaged. On 11 October 2008, reconstruction works had started at this site. As reported by chief of construction crew Magomed Kazim, the customer of the project is the State committee on reconstruction and the contractor is the Department for Reconstruction to the Government of North Ossetia – Alania.
Several journalists representing western media are visiting South Ossetia to see the process of reconstruction. The have visited "Moscow microdistirct" which is being built up, as well as other construction sites in Tskhinval. During their visit, the journalists had a possibility to talk to local population to better understand the situation in post-war South Ossetia. James Hill, a photographer from "New York Times", came to South Ossetia in 90s and right after the August 2008 hostilities.
"It is not by chance that the Georgian side has been recently organizing various provocations", stated the RSO President"s Plenipotentiary for Post-conflict Settlement Boris Chochiev. "We have learned Georgia"s provocative methods through these years and these provocations always happen right before some important meetings", said Chochiev. "We believe that Geneva talks are extremely important. We will be adopting the finalized mechanism for incident prevention. And it is clear, that this mechanism should have been agreed before to be able to rapidly react to these provocations. Nonetheless, at the last meeting, the Georgian side had forwarded conditions that appeared unacceptable for us and that is why this prevention mechanism had not been agreed", he noted.
"The repeated cases of violation of the RSO state border by OSCE Mission military monitors contribute to aggravation of the situation and speak for the fact that the OSCE military observers could not cope with their functions which they still have in Georgia", said RSO Foreign Minister Murat Djioev.
"Two days in a row the military observers of the OSCE Mission to Georgia attempted an illegal penetration into the territory of Tskhinval district of the Republic of South Ossetia and were stopped in the area of Adsvistavi village.
On 10 February 2009, the personnel of the Artsevi interior department personnel had observed and stopped a vehicle with two OSCE Mission military monitors not far from the village of Adzvistav of Tskhinval District. The monitors had illegally crossed the state border of the Republic of South Ossetia. In the conversation with the monitors, they stated that this fact was a pure misunderstanding. After necessary explanations and formalities, the monitors left the territory of South Ossetia.
Today, OSCE vehicle carrying military observers had again crossed the state border of South Ossetia from Georgia, reports the RSO MoD.
"The OSCE vehicle had crossed the border of South Ossetia near the village of Artsev. This fact had been recorded by the check-point of the RSO MoD. After SO defense ministry staff had tried to stop the OSCE vehicle, it turned round and left the territory of South Ossetia", reported the RSO MoD.
For the first time after the August aggression, representatives of NGOs met at NGO Resource Center. The meeting was devoted to the role of NGOs in informing international community about the events in South Ossetia. "We should continue our work as we used to work after the August tragedy. We achieved a huge breakthrough in the informational blockade. It is not a secret that exchange of information is extremely important nowadays," mentioned Lira Tskhovrebova, Director of Association of Women of SO for Democracy and Human Rights.
On 10 February, a working meeting between the Chairman of GAZPROM Alexei Miller and RSO President Eduard Kokoity was held at the central office of GAZPROM. The sides had discussed the process of rehabilitation of the gas infrastructure of South Ossetia destroyed during the hostilities. A special attention has been paid to the new gas pipeline from North Ossetia to South Ossetia and management of natural gas supply to South Ossetia.
"The purpose of today"s visit was to make necessary arrangements for the upcoming Geneva consultations to be held on 17-18 February", said the EU envoy Pierre Morel. "At today"s meeting we touched upon a wide range of problems related to security and stability, incident preventing and confidence-building, as well as humanitarian issues, such as the problem of the missing, water, electricity and gas supply", said Ambassador Morel.