JCC Due to Meet in Tbilisi in October

A plenary session of the quadripartite Joint Control Commission (JCC) on South Ossetia will apparently be held at the OSCE Mission offices in Tbilisi, in late October.

The decision was taken during talks between the Georgian deputy state minister for conflict resolution issues, Dimitri Manjavidze, and the Russian chief negotiator for South Ossetia, Yuri Popov.

Popov said that during his visit to Tskhinvali on September 27 the South Ossetian side had expressed a readiness to participate in the JCC session in Tbilisi.

?After consultations held in Tbilisi and Tskhinvali we are rather optimistic regarding the future activities of the JCC,? Popov told reporters in Tbilisi.

Tbilisi has long been trying to undermine the JCC, calling it, ?an outdated and unfair? Russian-led negotiating body. It involves negotiators from the Georgian, Russian, Russia?s North Ossetian and South Ossetian sides.

The last plenary session of the JCC was held in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia last October. Since then Tbilisi has been ignoring the body under various pretexts. In a recent blow to the JCC, Georgia downgraded its presence in the body in August, with the replacement of State Minister Davit Bakradze in the commission by his deputy, Manjavidze.

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