OSCE Official Calls for Free Access to S.Ossetia

OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek said on September 23 that he had been denied access to South Ossetia, causing “suspicion that there is something to hide there.”

Vollebaek visited Georgia on September 14-20, as he said, to assess the inter-ethnic situation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He also traveled to Sokhumi and the ethnic-Georgian populated Gali district of breakaway Abkhazia. Vollebaek said in a statement released on September 23 that he was unable to access South Ossetia.

“I urge the de facto authorities of South Ossetia to allow me to assess fully the situation on the ground,” he said. “The fact that the international community does not have access to some parts of South Ossetia and the villages adjacent to it gives rise to suspicion that there is something to hide there.”

He also said that accounts of internally displaced persons, with whom he had met, as well as reports by international humanitarian agencies, “raise serious concern about the situation in South Ossetia and the adjacent areas under Russian control.”

In Abkhazia, he said, he had discussed with the local authorities ways in which the OSCE commissioner’s office on national minorities “could assist their endeavours to strengthen the Abkhaz language and identity in the region.”

“I underlined that measures to reinforce the role of one language and culture should not be pursued at the expense of other languages and cultures,” Vollebaek said. “In this context, I visited two schools in the Gali District, where a vast majority of the population is ethnic Georgian. I called upon the de facto Abkhazian authorities to allow ethnic Georgian students in the region to study in Georgian.”