
JCC on South Ossetia Pointless ? Georgian Negotiator
Two days of talks have failed to yield any result, which again demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the existing Russian-led negotiating format, Dimitri Manjavidze, the chief Georgian negotiator on South Ossetia, said on October 24.
Georgian, South Ossetian, Russian and Russia?s North Ossetian negotiators held a session of the quadripartite negotiating body, the Joint Control Commission, in the OSCE mission headquarters in Tbilisi on October 23-24.
Speaking with reporters after the meeting Manjavidze, the Georgian deputy state minister for conflict resolution issues, blamed the South Ossetian side for the failure to reach agreement on a number of issues, which, Tbilisi had hoped, would help to demilitarize the conflict zone.
?Because of the South Ossetia side the meeting has failed to yield any results,? he said. ?We have failed to agree on any issue. Because of this we deem it pointless to continue the work of the JCC in the current format.?
South Ossetian chief negotiator Boris Chochiev, however, said that the Georgian side?s refusal to sign an agreement on the non-use of force caused the talks to fail.
?You know that Georgia?s ex-defense minister, Irakli Okruashvili, recently announced that there was a plan to use force in South Ossetia? Where are the guarantees that [Davit] Kezerashvili [the current Georgian defense minister] also does not have a similar plan?? Chochiev told reporters after the talks.
Unlike his Georgian counterpart, Chochiev said he hoped that the existing negotiating format would be maintained.
The Russian chief negotiator, Yuri Popov, said that the sides had failed to sign a joint protocol outlining their positions following the meeting, ?although we were close to an agreement.?
?I am optimistic and I hope that we will continue to work in this format,? Popov said. ?If talks are not continued in the existing format, it will send an alarming signal.?
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