20 OSCE Monitors Expected this Week

20 monitors from OSCE are expected to be deployed in the areas adjacent to South Ossetia by this weekend, Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Foreign Minister, who holds the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE, said in Tbilisi on August 22.

The exact venue of their deployment, however, still remains unclear.

OSCE monitors prior to the resumption of the conflict were based in Tskhinvali and monitoring the conflict zone – an area within 15-kilometer radius from Tskhinvali.

Stubb said that Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, “promised” him last week that there would no problem to reentry of the OSCE monitors in the areas surrounding Tskhinvali.

“So I am carefully optimistic, but unfortunately I can’t give you exact dates [when this reentry will occur],” Stubb said at a joint news conference with his Georgian counterpart, Eka Tkeshelashvili.

He said that deployment of monitors would be an important development in order to, on the one hand, observe ceasefire and on the other hand to provide OSCE-members states with “objective information” from the ground.

“Ceasefire agreement is fragile and that is why we must to focus all of our efforts on the withdrawal of the troops,” Stubb said.

Yet another top priority, Stubb said, would be to engage the international community in a broad discussion to help resolve the South Ossetian conflict.

“We need to start reflecting upon how to arrange the future of stabilization of the region; how and what form of international peacekeepers will be brought in; how do we get the political process going; will we have the high representative for the region; what is the long-term perspective for the region,” the Finnish Foreign Minister said.

“We must start thinking about how the international community – the Americans, the UN, the EU, the OSCE and Russians etc. – can solve this conflict and stabilize the region for a longer term.”