‘Difficult to Have a Clear Picture’ on Missile Incident – OSCE Envoy

The August 6 missile incident was “extremely dangerous and worrying,” Miomir Zuzul, the personal envoy of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, said on September 6.

The OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, appointed Zuzul, a former Croatian foreign minister, as his personal envoy to look into the details of the incident. After visiting both Tbilisi and Moscow last month, Zuzul presented a report on the issue to the OSCE Permanent Council on September 6.

Speaking at a news conference in Vienna after the Council session, Zuzul said that his report focused on “how to avoid further incidents and how to be prepared to react if there is a further incident.”

As expected, his report did not point the finger at Russia – something Tbilisi wanted to see.

Moreover, he said, according to the Associated Press, it was “extremely difficult to have a clear picture” of what exactly had happened, saying expert reports on the incident often conflicted.

Two separate groups of western experts backed Tbilisi’s version of events, saying that at least one aircraft had intruded into Georgian airspace from Russia and dropped a guided anti-radar missile deep into Georgian territory. A group of Russian military experts, however, concluded that the incident had been staged by Tbilisi to discredit Moscow.

“We didn’t come as a prosecutor or as a judge to judge what really happened,” Zuzul said.

The part of his report which deals with his proposals aimed at preventing a reoccurance of such an incident was made public, while the rest of the report remains confidential.

“The OSCE should have at its disposal rapid reaction mechanisms to intervene in such cases at the shortest notice,” Zuzul said. “A possibility could be to adopt the figure of a special representative of the Chairman-in-Office to be rapidly deployed should a crisis arise.”

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