Tbilisi Pushes Tskhinvali to Cooperate with Sanakoev

Authorities in Tbilisi said that Tskhinvali?s refusal to cooperate with the Tbilisi-loyal provisional administration in South Ossetia was the reason for the protracted water crisis in the region.

The Office of the Georgian State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues said in a statement on June 5 that the head of the OSCE Mission to Georgia, Roy Reeve and the head of the South Ossetian provisional administration, Dimitri Sanakoev, had agreed during a meeting on May 31 that ?joint efforts were needed for a comprehensive rehabilitation of the entire water supply system? in the region.

?For this purpose, an OSCE-led joint monitoring [of the water pipeline] with experts from the provisional administrative entity was carried out. But Tskhinvali has refused to continue the existing cooperation,? the statement reads.

The breakaway South Ossetian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on June 4 that Georgia wanted Tskhinvali to recognize the Tbilisi-loyal South Ossetian provisional administration in exchange for resolving the water shortage problem.

?This is an absurd and absolutely inadmissible demand,? the statement said.

As a result of the water pipeline damage, which according to the OSCE, was caused initially by holes punched into the old pipeline for crop irrigation, and then exacerbated by storm-damage, which caused it to break, Tskhinvali has been without potable water for almost two weeks.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)