Steps taken by the United States and NATO in Georgia cannot contribute to building confidence and promoting the negotiation process in the format of the Geneva discussions, the South Ossetian delegation said in a press release on the results of the 42nd round in the work of this site.
Representatives of South Ossetia and Abkhazia expressed concern over the expansion of NATO's military presence in Georgia, the continuation of aggressive revanchist Georgian rhetoric towards South Ossetia and Abkhazia,and also about the information on the delivery of the American missile complexes "Javelin" to Georgia.
"The South Ossetian participants in the discussions again reiterated the proposal to the Georgian side to start joint work on a bilateral basis on the delimitation and demarcation of the state border between the Republic of South Ossetia and Georgia, which would help to remove a large range of problems caused by the absence of appropriate agreements. The most serious attention was drawn to the provocative nature of the "excursions" to the state border line between the Republic of South Ossetia and Georgia, arranged by the Georgian authorities for representatives of the international community, " noted South Ossetian diplomats.
The focus of the first working group, as at the previous rounds of discussions, was to discuss the draft joint statement of participants confirming their commitment to one of the basic principles of international law - the non-use of force or the threat of its use in international relations.
As stressed in the message of the South Ossetian delegation, the adoption of this statement would allow continuing the work on bilateral agreements on the non-use of force, having the nature of legal obligations and firm international guarantees. "During the hours-long discussion of the text of this statement, the participants were almost able to come to a common denominator, but the members of the Georgian delegation, who could not reach agreement, again blocked the adoption of the joint statement," is said in the communique.
In the course of the discussions it was again noted the successful work of the joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM), as well as the IPRM "hotline".
At the same time, serious concern was expressed about the shootings of the South Ossetian border marks of the Republic of South Ossetia from the Georgian village of Tsitelubani in October 2017.
Participants of the delegation of South Ossetia drew attention to the insufficiently effective work of representatives of the EU monitoring mission in Georgia in connection with these incidents.
There was also a discussion of issues related to the search for the abducted and missing persons in the territory of Georgia of the citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia.In this regard, it was confirmed the continued work of the invited OSCE expert Dušan Ignatovich in 2018.
The South Ossetian delegation has noted that there was no discussion on the problem of refugees at the round. "The resumption of discussions on refugee issues will be possible only if Georgia refuses to artificially politicize this humanitarian issue and cease the practice of discussing the problems behind the backs of other parties interested in solving them," the South Ossetian diplomats once again recalled their principled position.
December 12-13, 2017 in Geneva was held the next round of the International Security Discussions in Transcaucasia. The consultations were attended by the delegations of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russia, Georgia, the United States, as well as the EU, the UN and the OSCE representatives. The South Ossetian delegation was headed by the Presidential Envoy for post-conflict settlement Murat Dzhioev.
The work was traditionally held in two working groups: on security and humanitarian issues.
It is expected that the 43rd round of discussions will be held in March 2018.
Foto: apsnypress.info
