OSCE Chair Says Russian Mediator Days Over

Russia should no longer be able to act as mediator when peace talks begin, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, who holds OSCE’s rotating chairmanship, said on August 9.

He will travel to Tbilisi and Moscow on Monday amid ongoing clashes between the Georgian and Russian troops in South Ossetia and series of Russia’s air strikes on Georgian civilian and military installations across the country.

“Russia is at the moment a party in this conflict, not a mediator, and that has to be mirrored when ceasefire and peace talks begin,” Reuters reported quoting Stubb as saying at a news conference in Helsinki. “It is clear that there is no return to the status quo, to what was."

He also said that expectations of a quick solution should be kept low. "On a scale of one to 10, we are at about two," Stubb added.

Stubb also said there was no question the current conflict was a war. “This is a war, no doubt about it. There is no reason to call it anything else.”