Statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia at the Meeting of OSCE Special Permanent Council
Wednesday, August 18 2004
I was asked by the President of Georgia to come to Vienna and to report to you on the latest events in Georgia, because we think that this Organisation has to be fully informed on the developments, which are happening on the ground in order to be prepared for any of the decisions we are in the process of putting forward here. That refers to both the possibilities of increasing the actual monitoring that is taking place, as well as all other ideas, including the International Conference to which I will come back later.
First of all I want to give to you the fullest possible picture of the latest developments. The situation is complex, it is tense and it is paradoxical, because we are having a very clear escalation of the tension and of the violence on the ground and at the same time we are having an escalation of the peace initiatives. So all that is not very coherent.
Since August 11th in fact we’ve had an escalation of the incidents, which were sporadic in the beginning, but now every night we have artillery shelling and every night there are military, policemen and civilian casualties that are counted on the Georgian side.
We had to evacuate the children and women from the Georgian villages because of two factors: one was the nightly shelling, which of course puts very strong pressure on the civilian population, the second reason is that the only road that leads to these Georgian villages from the rest of the Georgian territory has also been the object of constant attacks and so it was no longer duly protected and it became difficult to deliver the goods and products to the villagers and there was no security on that side either. That is the bypass road, which passes by the Ossetian side of the territory and goes to the Georgian villages, on which the Prime Minister of Georgia himself was the object of firing.
That is a bit difficult to understand if one doesn’t know that the whole territory of South Ossetia is like a patchwork where you have Georgian and Ossetian villages next to each other. One of the most important elements of security for the Georgian side is to be able to get to the Georgian villages and anything that would be a threat to this link to the Georgian villages is evaluated as a very big threat to the security.
So, the escalation is there and has not been contained despite the fact, and one would say, because of the fact that we have agreed on ceasefire. In fact it has coincided with the agreement reached on ceasefire since there has been an increase in both artillery fire and the initiation of the snipers’ attacks, which are the subject of even more concern because they threaten directly the civilian villagers. I have to say that, according to the reports I’ve got this morning, this night has been the worst one with 3 dead and 8 wounded on the Georgian side. I don’t have any reporting on the Ossetian side.
That brings me to one of our concerns that we have on the reporting of the OSCE. It could be more operational – this morning I was asking whether there had been reporting for the night accidents, I was told that reporting would be done at the end of the day after the possible meeting with Kokoiti. This is maybe one of the points we could correct without any significant changes, since it doesn’t require the change of mandate or anything of that kind. But for us it is important to have more operational type of reporting to know that we have the assessment of the OSCE in due time.
So, this degradation of the situation, which is the subject of our great concern, has had its counterpart as a reaction in form of what I’ve called the escalation of peace initiatives. We have had our Prime Minister propose officially to have a plan that would be consisting of three elements, which would be – demilitarization, ceasefire and direct dialogue. This was proposed already past week.
We had yesterday, after other meetings that concluded to the ceasefire over the weekend, quite positive JCC meeting, which in fact agreed on ceasefire, they agreed that road blocks would be lifted and the roads leading to the Georgian villages would be protected and they agreed that there should be continuation of the meetings of the JCC on the Ossetian part this time and in order to prepare the meeting between our Prime Minister Mr. Zhvania and Mr.Kokoiti. We have also been making steps in order to have direct dialogue beyond the JCC – the Prime Minister himself went to the Region and to Tskhinvali that is when he and his convoy were fired with an aim of preventing them from getting there.
The Head of the Parliament, who also wanted to go to Tskhinvali and eventually meet with Mr. Kokoiti, was not allowed to enter Tskhinvali. One of our problems is that all of your statements are appealing for an increased dialogue between the parties, and putting an end to the conflict, and that is very understandable, but it is very difficult to have one-sided dialogue. We need the other part to come to the dialogue and to agree to this dialogue. So, we are very hopeful that today’s meeting of the Joint Commission will lead finally to the mentioned meeting between our Prime Minister and Mr. Kokoiti. But if it doesn’t happen, we are expecting all of your countries, all of our partners to help us to put some pressure again to reach that result. Because in fact, without the direct dialogue we can’t get down to the basis of what is behind this tension.
I think that we are at a point where there is recognition that this tension should be in some way stopped and this initial phase of confrontation should be stopped until it escalates further. It can still be stopped and the efforts that we see and the positive results in the JCC are probably reflecting that progress.
But also other element, which is interesting I think, and should be noted, is that there has been recognition by the Ossetian side that they lack control over certain armed groups and that there are third forces on the territory which they do not control, especially, probably some of the snipers. This is directly the result of something that I have already pointed out at my last meeting here – it was the entrance on the territory of South Ossetia of mercenaries or fighters that were coming through the Roki tunnel without any control. Some of them left, some of them stayed.
They are certainly following their own objectives, and nobody knows exactly what they except, it may be simply to keep or to provoke instability. There are very good reasons for some forces, including material reasons and intentions, for which some groups would be very interested into keeping or developing instability in that border region. So, the fact that it has been officially recognized by the Ossetian Side is something that is very interesting. It doesn’t make things much easier but there have been talks between two sides and military elements to see how we could maybe seek together how to neutralize those third elements before they really create by themselves an escalation that would not be in the interest of either of our parties, Georgian or Ossetian.
Now let me turn to the issue of where we are and what is the position of the Georgian Authorities and why am I here in fact.
First of all let me inform you on the letter our President has sent to our counterparts: to the European leaders, to the US President and to a number of other counterparts.
This letter is to inform them about the dangerous situation in Georgia, and about our position that we have to take all the initiatives that are possible at this stage towards re-establishing dialogue and towards finding a peaceful solution. We are ready to move to that direction, we have proposals on the political status of the region, on the full demilitarization of the region, for which it is necessary to have some concrete procedures in place that would allow for effective monitoring of the whole region, since what we are calling for is the full demilitarization, which would leave in place only the elements of the peacekeeping forces. And this will of course need more than just a declaration. If we do not want to create new instability, it has to be fully transparent and fully monitored.
The President has been calling on the mentioned leaders to help to mediate for the dialogue that is necessary and urgent and to support our calls for increased OSCE monitoring, for enlargement of the mandate, including with an aim to control better the border, because we see now that this border and traffic on it became one part of the problem. The President has been calling for the international support with a view to getting out of the tense situation through the political level, especially through the high political level. In fact, he has also written earlier to the President Putin to offer him to discuss that situation at a higher political level. He was proposing to send the Prime Minister or Myself to Moscow in the middle of August.
The answer that came now is in its part positive, but it is still at the middle level of dialogue saying that we could raise the level of the JCC, which we think is useful and it has proven useful yesterday and I hope it will be useful today too, but maybe we need a higher level dialogue with all the parties. That is why we are expecting the meeting with Kokoiti, and at the same time we are ready for a higher-level dialogue with the Russian side. That is something that your Authorities should also support.
The President in his letter didn’t talk specifically about the international conference, he talked about the forum for negotiation because he wants to have the things open. He wanted me first to come here. The main reason of my visit in fact is to present our initial view, because it is very open and we have not fixed the terms for the international conference. What we are convinced of is that we need two elements to get out of this situation.
First of all we need to defuse a tension and for that we need more involvement, more mediation, more monitoring and more political will of all sides. But we need also the perspective of global solution, which will include political status, full demilitarization, and economic rehabilitation. Unless there is quite soon in view that there can be this global solution, we will probably continue to have this tension that could erupt any time and the ceasefire will be still difficult to preserve.
The International Conference would have as its first objective to discuss the comprehensive solution and the Georgian side would be ready to come with a full-fledged proposal on the political status and on the demilitarization, on the monitoring of this demilitarization process, as well as on the control of borders and finally the economic rehabilitation, which is very important.
In the Press-Statement issued by the Office of the President, it was declared that we are ready to offer first of all the political settlement for South Ossetia that includes the provision of significant autonomy within the State of Georgia, we are ready to offer to South Ossetia broad autonomy within the Georgian State federal structure, dual Georgian-Russian citizenship and the power-sharing at the central governmental level. This is all in broad terms, of course and it will have to be detailed, how we view the question of the political status.
The Conference should also decide on the mechanisms to ensure non-resumption of hostilities, security of the population – that goes through the extension of OSCE monitoring in the region.
The political status beyond the ideas that we will present has certainly to be based on something. We think it should be on the basis of the Baden Document, which is as good as another starting point for the discussions in the Conference.
We have to discuss the format of the International Conference, we are open to the different possibilities. We think, it could be put under the aegis both of the OSCE and the UN. We think that there should be participation as such of the European Union, since there are means and instruments that the European Union could bring to help to ensure some of the elements that we need in the region. I’m talking for instance about customs control of the border, border management, police mission.
That could be done in the cooperation with the OSCE, but we need broad International Conference that could ensure the involvement of all the Parties, but also of all the Organisations that would have a role in different elements of the peace settlement and that would be of course the UN and the EU for economic rehabilitation, which would be very important at that stage.
Initially the Conference should focus on demilitarization, on the security of population, and on the extension of the OSCE monitoring. It is our opinion that the Conference should be convened urgently, but we still need the time to get full agreement not only on the principles of the Conference, but also on its modalities. Before that we think it is very important, as we had invited you earlier on my last visit, that the visit of the Permanent Council take place as planned on September 5th. I think it will be very important for you all and your Authorities to get a hold on the situation on the ground and on how and what elements of solution the OSCE could bring to the situation.
We expect the first PC Meeting right after this visit to be able to take at least initial increased measures for monitoring. We are very thankful for the initial steps that were taken – the additional two monitors in the Mission. But of course the six monitors that are there are very few for the task they are confronting with, especially if they are to assume more active monitoring like getting on the monitoring stations together with three peacekeepers. If they have to be on the ground and not only on call, six persons on a 24-hour basis, you can understand, is very limited and without any proportion to the situation.
The Conference will have to establish the format for the political negotiation, building on the framework and the principles of the Baden Document. In case we think that the monitoring for the demilitarization is not sufficient, the Conference could discuss the options of launching an International Peacekeeping Operation. Since there exist many different formats, it could be adding to the deployed Russian Peacekeepers other contingence from other countries, which will be willing to participate in the operation; it could be an EU operation with the UN Security Council authorisation mandate; it could be an OSCE Peacekeeping operation – there are many different possibilities.
There is something beyond this, which I’m now presenting to you are just our initial ideas, which have still to be discussed even within the Georgian Government to be presented as the formal proposal. We want first, and that’s the reason why the President didn’t put it clearly in writing in his letter, and the reason why I wanted to present these initial ideas, to give you time to report to your authorities and get your comments before we make final assessment of how we want to put down our proposal for the International Conference.
It will be done in very close contact with CiO, Mr. Passy, with whom I’ve been already in contact and who said that he will be also in contact with your delegations to see what the position of the OSCE itself will be at this International Conference. I think, in principle, we all should agree that something of that type is needed to offer prospects of full-fledged peace settlement that encompasses all the different elements that have to be solved to get lasting stability in the region. Again, we are very flexible in finding different formats on modalities and on the procedures for that Conference.
We are of the opinion that we shouldn’t delay that, but we should be also conscious that any International Conference like that cannot start while there are constant violations of the ceasefire and its initial focus should be on enforcement of the ceasefire. It’s certainly our determination. There are very strict orders that have been given by the President to all of our forces present in the region to ensure the ceasefire.
Over the past nights our forces have been answering to the artillery shells that they have been receiving, but they are answering only after two hours when it really becomes impossible for the forces present to remain silent and defy that they are receiving. We don’t know exactly from where those fires start. Some of them are the artillery shells probably from the official forces, others are less clear, especially with the snipers’ involvement and could be coming from the third and indistinct forces.
Anyway, we have to do something about it. The President was also the one who made the proposal that if three nights in a row the ceasefire was fully respected we would evacuate 30% of all the forces that are present and after a week bring them down by further 30% in view of a full demilitarization. It has to be progressive, so that we don’t create very dangerous situation for the civilians that are living in those villages and we don’t cause a panic evacuation. For the time being that has not happened.
The evacuation of women and children that we carried out was the one that was organised to bring them to sea resorts during this very tense period and bring them back when the school restarts. But if the situation will continue to escalate into the night shelling of the villages we could have much more dangerous humanitarian problem with people living in those villages. This is what we have to prevent.
So, there is a very difficult balance between starting the demilitarization to show our good will without provoking something that would be more dangerous and that would entail then reaction on our part that we don’t want and maybe we couldn’t be able to resist. So, we are trying to do this cautiously, but we’re still moving towards it and we are very determined to make the political dialogue work and to have the conclusions of the JCC enforced as soon as possible.
Finally, I will conclude, by just saying what I’ve started with, that the situation is tense, has already provoked casualties even among civilian population, which was not the case during my first visit here, but it is still controllable, it is still manageable and it depends on the joint efforts that we will do to try to bring all the elements of the solution together.
Thank you very much.
Vienna, 18th August 2004