OSCE not to Proceed Further on Missile Incident

The OSCE debates on the August 6 missile incident have highlighted the unequivocal U.S. support for Tbilisi, the EU’s noncommittal response and Moscow’s interest in limiting the international scope of the issue.

The OSCE’s main political decision-making body, the Permanent Council, heard on September 6 a report by Miomir Zuzul, the OSCE Spanish chairmanship’s special envoy, who was tasked with looking into the details of Georgia’s allegation that a Russian aircraft had dropped a guided anti-radar missile deep into Georgia’s territory, close to the South Ossetian conflict zone on August 6.

Speaking at a news conference in Vienna after the Council session, Zuzul said it was “extremely difficult to have a clear picture” of what exactly had happened. Tbilisi, however, wanted a more resolute response from the OSCE.

A few days before the OSCE debates, Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze said she hoped Europe’s biggest security body would take “a principled position” on the missile incident.

Zuzul also pointed out that reports prepared by separate groups of experts were often conflicting.

Two separate groups of 13 technical experts from seven western countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States) backed Tbilisi’s version of events, saying that at least one aircraft had intruded into Georgian airspace from Russia and dropped a guided anti-radar missile deep into Georgian territory. A group of Russian military experts, however, concluded that the incident had been staged by Tbilisi to discredit Moscow.

Julie Finley, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, told the Permanent Council that there had been “no real evidence to support the theory that the Georgians staged the August 6 incident” and proposed that the experts, who had probed into the incident, be invited to the council to brief the members on the findings.

“We invite all OSCE participating States that still have questions about the facts in this case to engage Georgia, and, if appropriate, send their own technical experts to the region to examine the evidence as part of an OSCE-organized, third-party investigation,” the U.S. diplomat said.

However, an additional probe, in particular one under OSCE auspices, is unlikely.

Miomir Zuzul said at the news conference after the Permanent Council session that instead of sending an additional fact-finding mission, the OSCE should focus on creating a mechanism capable of rapidly intervening should a crisis arise.

The Russian ambassador to the OSCE, Aleksey Borodavkin, also came out against an additional probe under OSCE auspices.

“Further involvement of the OSCE in the investigation of the August 6 air incident will lead to unnecessary internationalization of the issue which is already discussed on a bilateral [Russo-Georgian] level,” Aleksey Borodavkin said.

The Portuguese representative to the OSCE made a cautiously worded statement on behalf of the European Union. Although the statement did not bluntly endorse the Georgian version of events on August 6, it said the EU wanted to express “appreciation for the work of the experts, amongst them experts from a number of EU countries.”

“The EU would also like to thank the OSCE Mission to Georgia for their first investigation and immediate Spot Report,” the EU statement said, referring to a report by OSCE observers on the ground based on witness accounts taken almost immediately after the incident occurred.

The EU has joined the U.S. in calls for an increase in the number of OSCE observers in the South Ossetian conflict zone – something Tbilisi has been calling for some time. The proposal, however, is unlikely to materialise because of Russian objections.