South Ossetian Foreign Minister Dmitry Medoev commented on RIA Novosti his meeting with deputies of the Italian national parliament Pino Cabras and Vito Comencini.
“This is the first time that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of South Ossetia has been received at this level. We believe that the deputies of the Italian parliament have the right to know about a different point of view besides the one that has been developing in the last decade around South Ossetia,” Medoev told RIA Novosti.
At a one and a half hour meeting in the Chamber of Deputies, the Minister told the Italian parliamentarians about the modern history of the Republic, the origins of the conflict with Georgia and the current domestic and foreign policy of the country.
“We are experiencing the isolation in the international arena, in particular, here in Europe, therefore it is important for us and for the deputies, because the information is one-sided. We see that there is interest in the situation in the Caucasus,” the Minister continued.
According to him, the very fact of the invitation to the meeting in the Parliament is of particular importance, which gives hope that "we will be heard."
As the chairman of the new faction of the Italian parliament "Alternative" Pino Cabras has said at the meeting, the issue of South Ossetia is connected with the termination of the existence of the USSR and the situation in which, in the absence of a unified state, the Republic was part of Georgia, which gave rise to "a huge misunderstanding on the part of the West who argues in the light of the impossibility of changing the boundaries. "
“One thing is the inviolability of the borders of a state that has existed for 400 years, and another thing is to declare the search for peaceful solutions in a completely new situation, in which it no longer makes sense to maintain a status that no longer exists,” the parliamentarian said.
According to him, the efforts of the Italian parliamentarians may lie in "raising awareness" of the Italian society and the Parliament regarding special cases such as the situation in South Ossetia.
“I am sure that many journalists and parliamentarians would not be able to find Ossetia on the map. And these people express opinions in newspapers and in parliaments. If people know more, they can begin to listen to more than just news that comes from Brussels or elsewhere. This issue is very ideologized and looks like swimming against the tide, but our faction has such training,” Kabras said.
The deputy from the "League" Vito Comencini, in turn, drew parallels between the struggle of the South Ossetian people for independence and the desire for autonomy in the northern Italian region of Veneto.
“We intend to continue these friendly contacts and relations of cooperation, although we know how difficult it is because of the pressure that we are experiencing from Georgia and the United States,” Comencini said, referring to the trips of Veneto representatives to South Ossetia.
At the end of the meeting, Medoev invited his partners to travel to the Caucasian republic at any time convenient for them. During the conversation with RIA Novosti, Comencini said that he would like to visit the Caucasus and that he was very interested in the similarities between the Italian and Caucasian peoples.
“Our duty now is to talk about what the situation really is, as opposed to how it is presented by the Western media,” the parliamentarian concluded.
