A distinctive feature of the seventh technical meeting in the format of Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms (IPRM) was that before the dialogue began, representatives of the EU and OSCE observers sent their proposals to the South Ossetian party, proposing a phased plan to resolve the situation in the village of Tsnelis due to a police post illegally exposed by the Georgian side in South Ossetia. This was reported to reporters by the head of the South Ossetian delegation to the IPRM Yegor Kochiev.
Protect the safety of the population
According to Kochiev, South Ossetia sees the only solution to this problem in the removal of the illegal Georgian post from the territory of South Ossetia. “This would serve as the first step for a further settlement of the situation in (Uista) Tsnelis. But, unfortunately, at this meeting we did not come to a mutually acceptable solution. The Georgian party flatly refuses to remove the police post. In this regard, the South Ossetian armed forces are located in Tsnelis with the aim of ensuring and protecting the security of our population and the territory of the Republic from the outside encroachments,” Kochiev said.
A phased solution to this issue for representatives of the EU and the OSCE is to limit the type of weapons used by security forces, restrictions on the number of personnel, etc. “But all these points are secondary for us. For South Ossetia, the number of Georgian policemen located on the territory of South Ossetia does not matter, for us even one is unacceptable. Georgian policemen should not be on our territory,” the Deputy Envoy said.
Whom are belonging the drones?
As for the periodically appearing of the unmanned aerial vehicles over the Republic of South Ossetia from Georgia, then, according to Yegor Kochiev, they discuss security issues in the area during the dialogue, and therefore they also voiced these problems.
“The Georgian party does not confirm the drones belonging to Georgia. At this stage, South Ossetia is investigating the ownership of unmanned aerial vehicles, and I think, having received the results, we will be able to present concrete evidence to the Georgian party, " Kochiev said.
Ready to solve
The date of the next meeting is not yet known, but as noted by the head of the South Ossetian delegation to the IPRM the parties have not reached a common denominator for the seventh time and do not consider it appropriate to hold a meeting for the sake of the meeting. “It’s another matter that we have agreed that if the Georgian party has any ideas for normalizing the situation, they will find the ways of removing the illegal Georgian roadblock, we will contact each other via a hot line and arrange a meeting. And a dialogue can take place at any time,” the Deputy Envoy considers.
