Georgian Parliament Speaker on South Ossetian conflict

Georgian Parliament Speaker Nino Burdzhanadze assured State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov that "no military actions on the part of Tbilisi will be conducted in South Ossetia." Mr. Gryzlov said this to journalists on Thursday.

He explained that the meeting with Burdzhanadze took place in Edinburgh, where they took part in a session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

"We discussed the situation in the zone of the Georgo-Ossetian conflict that has deteriorated lately," Gryzlov said.

He noted that if the situation is aggravated, the State Duma may submit a relevant issue onto the agenda of the house's plenary session.

In his turn, Duma international affairs committee head Konstantin Kosachev believes that the situation in South Ossetia "proceeds according to the worst scenario, and official Tbilisi's actions may negatively tell on the settlement of the Georgo-Ossetian conflict."

"What Georgia does now takes us back to the situation before 1992, when the conflicting sides did not interact but were opposed to each other," the deputy said.

He said that in 1992 the conflicting sides with Russia's participation agreed to do everything possible to settle the situation in the region.

Kosachev expressed bewilderment as regards official Tbilisi's criticism of the actions of peacekeeping forces in the conflict zone aimed against Russia. "There's no Russian side there [in the region]. There are peacekeeping forces of the mixed control commission there, whose mandate was confirmed by Tbilisi, Tskhinvali and Moscow," he said.

Kosachev stressed he has much fewer claims to the Ossetian side as it, reacting to some actions by Tbilisi, never put to doubt the importance and necessity of preserving the mixed control commission mechanism. The Georgian side does it, it means that it again contributes to a possible passage of the conflict to a hot phase, as was the case before 1992, said the deputy.

Meanwhile, according to messages coming from the region, Russian peacekeepers brought hardware to the village of Vanati in South Ossetia.

"At 8:15 a.m. Moscow time, the peacekeeping forces commander announced combat readiness and deployed to the conflict area seven units of military hardware to prevent an armed clash," said an officer on duty of the mixed peacekeeping forces staff in the zone of the Georgo-Ossetian conflict.

The Interior Ministry Department for the Georgian region of Shida Kartli, Russian peacekeepers received an order to withdraw from the village of Vanati South Ossetian armed formations that took positions there today morning. "Besides, the peacekeepers must first of all free up to 50 Georgian interior ministry troops who as part of Georgian peacekeeping forces were in the village of Vanati," said the regional police.

According to the police, four checkpoints of Russian peacekeepers will be advanced in the village.