OSCE Welcomes Georgian Troops’ Withdrawal from South Ossetia

The OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy, welcomed Georgian President Saakashvili’s statement on the withdrawal from the South Ossetian conflict zone of those troops which are not assigned to the joint peacekeeping forces and called on the South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoev to adopt a similar stance.

In messages sent to Mikheil Saakashvili and Eduard Kokoev on August 20, OSCE Chairman-in-Office called on the both sides for “cessation of violence as a precondition for reinvigorating dialogue on a political settlement.”
 
In a separate letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, he noted the role of the Russian Federation in efforts to achieve a settlement of the conflict, OSCE press office reported on August 20.

On 18 August the Bulgarian Chairmanship convened a special session of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna to discuss the situation in the zone of conflict. Earlier, the Chairman-in-Office invited the parties to hold a meeting in Sofia for a high-level political dialogue.

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