Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli announced on February 18 that Tbilisi will start, as he put it, a “unilateral demilitarization” of the South Ossetian conflict zone and, in addition, offered to hold talks between the Interior Ministers of Georgia and the unrecognized republic. Both of these initiatives appear to conciliatory signals by Tbilisi towards Tskhinvali and Moscow following a strong-worded resolution adopted by the Georgian Parliament on February 15.
Speaking after a session of the governmental coordination council in charge of the South Ossetian conflict issues, PM Nogaideli said that the Georgian side is ready to meet with the unrecognized republic’s Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzaev in Tbilisi or in the S.Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.
The leadership of breakaway South Ossetia, as well as the Russian side, has been calling for a meeting between the Interior Ministers for some time but the Georgian side has consistantly ignored this proposal until now.
This initiative is in the line with Tbilisi’s position focusing more focus on the police component rather than on the military component in the South Ossetian conflict zone.
PM Nogaideli said that Tbilisi aims at “protecting human rights in the conflict zone,” and added that Tbilisi “will undertake all possible measures” to achieve this.
This issue is expected to be discussed during an upcoming session of the Joint Control Commission – the quadripartite negotiating body involving the Georgian, South Ossetian, Russian and Russia’s North Ossetian sides.
But the fate of this session is not yet clear. Initially, a meeting was planned for February 20-21 in Vienna. Russia refused to participate in the Vienna session and instead offered to hold talks in Moscow.
“Tomorrow [on February 20] morning we [the Georgian authorities] will discuss this issue and I think tomorrow we will know exactly where and when the session will be held. At the moment I can not give an exact answer to this question,” Giorgi Khaindrava, the Georgian State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues, told Civil Georgia on February 19.
In another conciliatory gesture, PM Nogaideli also said that the Georgian side will launch a “unilateral demilitarization” of the conflict zone. The Georgian side plans to remove its military fortifications as well as revoke the authorization of those units of the Military Police which are currently deployed in the conflict zone and are in violation of any agreements.
PM Nogaideli said that the units of the Georgian Military Police currently deployed in the South Ossetian conflict zone will become part of the Georgian battalion of the Joint Peacekeeping Forces (JPKF).
As a result, the Georgian side will increase its peacekeeping troops in the conflict zone up to 330 servicemen, the Prime Minister added.
The JPKF consists of Russian, Georgian and Ossetian peacekeeping battalions. Each side is authorized to deploy a maximum of 500 servicemen in the conflict zone as part of the JPKF. All other military units deployed in the conflict zone are unauthorized.
The United States called on Georgia on February 9 “to contribute its full complement of forces to maintain the proper balance within the JPKF.”
Nogaideli also said that the Georgian side will launch a rotation of its peacekeeping battalion, starting on February 19.
“We will send the list of these servicemen to the JPKF command and agree on this [list] with the commander of the JPKF on February 20,” PM Nogaideli said, adding that the Georgian side will rotate its peacekeepers once every three months, starting from this spring.
He also said that the Georgian side will destroy its trenches and dismantle its military fortifications in the conflict zone as soon as the snow begins melting. Nogaideli called on the South Ossetian side to undertake similar actions in order to defuse tensions in the region.
