Georgian Foreign Minister Comments on Border Monitoring

Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili said that Georgia is, on the one hand, working with OSCE to prolong its border monitoring mission on the Russo-Georgian border and on the other hand, tries to foster international efforts to replace the OSCE border monitors with other international observers in the event the OSCE fails again to prolong mandate of its observers.

Russia vetoed discussion of issue of the prolongation of the OSCE Border Monitoring Operation (BMO) at the OSCE Permanent Council session on December 30. The OSCE observers were monitoring the 280 km Daghestani, Chechen and Ingush sections of the Russian-Georgian border, in an effort to observe and report border-crossing movements.

?Currently the [BMO] mission is still deployed on the border, but as their mandate has expired on December 31, 2004 they are not able to perform their duties. We have requested for several times to discuss at the OSCE prolongation of the mandate,? Salome Zourabichvili said at a news conference on January 17.

?On the other hand we are working with our partner countries in order to find out what ways exist to deploy other international observers on the border. We have launched talks with the European Union regarding this issue. In December, when I met with Javier Solana [the EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy] we discussed this issue. His positive position about it is very well known. However, it does not mean that the EU mission will be deployed on our border tomorrow. It requires hard work,? Salome Zourabichvili said.