Vienna - Georgia's foreign minister called on the UN
Security Council on Thursday to take action against Russia, alleging
it had breached international security by its action in her country.
At a special meeting of the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna, both Georgian Foreign
Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili and Russian representative Anvar
Azimov traded allegations of ethnic cleansing in Georgia's breakaway
province of South Ossetia.
Tkeshelashvili said the Security Council should act under Chapter
7 of the UN charter, which deals with non-military and military
sanctions to restore peace and security.
'It is not only a threat to international security, but a breach
of it,' Tkeshelashvili said, referring to Russia's military
involvement in Georgia and its recognition of Georgia's separatist
provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The minister also claimed Russian forces had conducted ethnic
cleansing in South Ossetia.
'The territory previously known in Soviet times as South Ossetia
is completely cleansed of remnants of the Georgian population,' she
said. In the buffer zone around the breakaway province, ethnic
cleansing was ongoing, she added.
Russian forces had acted together with ethnic Ossetian, Cossack,
and Chechen militias in killing young men, raping and driving away
women, as well as destroying villages and fields, Tkeshelashvili
said.
Russian representative Azimov told reporters after the meeting
that there was 'no evidence of ethnic cleansing' of Georgians in
South Ossetia, while accusing the other side of having committed such
crimes.
Stressing the process of independence for the two Georgian regions
was 'irreversible', Azimov said it was now up to South Ossetian
authorities to deal with such allegations.
Asked when Russian forces would leave areas around South Ossetia,
Azimov said that 'sooner or later we will leave these territories.'
In its meeting, the Permanent Council of the OSCE, the
organization's decision-making body, did not formally discuss the
outstanding modalities of sending up to 100 additional observers to
Georgia, a diplomat said.
By Thursday evening, the Vienna-based organization will increase
the number of monitoring officers to 22, a spokesman said.
The 56 OSCE members still have to agree on where in Georgia the
officers will be deployed for observing the ceasefire between Russian
and Georgian forces, as Moscow has so far refused to allow them in
South Ossetia.
It was up to South Ossetia whether to allow in OSCE monitors,
the Russian representative said, adding that according to the Russian
military, 'for security reasons it is not the time' to do so.
Georgia's foreign minister reiterated Tbilisi's position that any
geographic limitation for monitors 'cannot be tolerated.'
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