Agt on non-use of force to be discussed at Geneva consultations

ITAR-TASS
October 21 2009

TSKHINVAL - The next round of Geneva consultations will be more difficult than the previous ones, the South Ossetian president's special representative for post-conflict settlement Boris Chochiyev said on Wednesday.

The participants in the upcoming eighth round of consultations in Geneva will have to draft an agreement on the non-use of force.

"We should draft a document based on the Tagliavini Commission's report, with many provisions of which we disagree, but the main conclusion of which is that Georgia started the war in South Ossetia," Chochiyev said.

"We should also take into account increasingly frequent testimonies by Georgian politicians and military experts that Georgia attacked South Ossetia," he added.

Chochiyev also urged the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations, which are also parties to the Geneva discussions, to state their position on the Tagliavini report.

He said the South Ossetian delegation was ready to discuss at the consultations in Geneva, scheduled for November 11, suggestions regarding the return of refugees and other humanitarian issues.

The Geneva discussions involving Russia, South Ossetia, Georgia, Abkhazia, the United States, the U.N., the European Union, and the OSCE are held under the agreements reached by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.