The RSO President Eduard Kokoity received the delegation of PACE headed by Chairperson of Migration and refugee Commission Corien Jonker paing an introductory visit to South Ossetia.
In his welcome speech, Eduar Kokoity stressed that "South Ossetia remains and open state and is ready to build up normal, transparent relations with the rest of the world and first of all with Russia and Europe."
"I believe that PACE will prepare objective conclusions, since it often happens that we find biased attitudes to the events in South Ossetia. We can speak about the responsibility of European structures which we warned about the expected aggression by Georgia against South Ossetia and that they did not prevent this tragedy", said President.
"We have repeatedly informed representatives of OSCE and EU, as well as your colleagues in PACE and Ambassadors accredited in Georgia, about the excessive militarization of Georgia. Instead of paying attention to our concerns, many European states continued providing arms to Georgia and sending their military experts there. OSCE representatives left the territory of South Ossetia several ours before the aggression started. Raising the issue of increase in the number of their monitoring officers in the zone of conflict, demanding for more powers, they were pretty well aware of the number of personnel and armed equipment concentrated in the close vicinity to the border with South Ossetia", said Eduard Kokoity.
The President had also stressed that the "OSCE witnessed of Georgia"s active building-up offensive fortifications. Regrettably, they did not influence the development of the situation and did not prevent the tragedy – they silently left the conflict zone. This certainly causes mistrust among the population of South Ossetia towards OSCE and other European structures which visited South Ossetia and talked to local residents and which were shared with existing situation concerns."
"Georgia had turned into the most militarized state not only on the territory of former Soviet Union, but in the whole world. Despite this fact, we fully understand that South Ossetia is part of Europe. We wish there is due understanding of our position to make sure that Europe understands our strife for a union with RF, since it is a centuries-old union. We would like to have similar warm relations with Europe", said Eudard Kokoity.
In return, Corien Jonker thanked the South Ossetian side for warm welcome.
"I am glad that I had an opportunity to visit South Ossetia and see the humanitarian consequences of this catastrophe." she said.
"I would like to stress that the only goal of visit to South Ossetia is to see the humanitarian situation in South Ossetia. My objectives do not imply conclusions on who was right and was wrong. As the Chairperson of PACE Migration and Refugee Committee, the key question which interests me is the situation in which the people are living. The purpose of this visit is to prepare an objective, just and correct report on the situation in South Ossetia", emphasized Jonker.
