STRASBOURG. Oct 3 (Interfax-AVN) - The resolution, "The consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia" adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Thursday evening, is quite contradictory, said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Russian delegation to PACE, who also chairs the Russian State Duma international committee.
"The result that we have obtained is extremely contradictory. On the one hand, the assembly abstained from dire assessments, which is good news, but on the other hand, the text of the resolution is ill balanced and rife with a huge number of factual inaccuracies and legal nonsense," Kosachyov told journalists.
Russian MPs were trying to communicate objective information to their PACE colleagues but "what they saw was the rejection of our legal argument and the triumph of the political opportunism," he said. Most parliamentarians refused to quote in the resolution the provisions contained in the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan and were trying to insert something that has not been agreed in this document, Kosachyov said.
The good news is that the resolution admits Georgia's responsibility for provoking the use of armed force in South Ossetia and serious violations of international law, he said. "But this is where the objective side of the document ends. The assessment given by it to Russia is quite one-sided and biased," said the head of the Russian delegation.
Russian MPs are willing to cooperate with international communities in order ensure a genuine objective and unbiased investigation of the events, he said.
"In the lobbies we are often approached by many parliamentarians, who are whispering us in the ear that they understand the irreversible nature of the situation because neither Abkhaz, nor Ossetians want to be part of Georgia," he said, commenting on the provisions in the PACE resolution, calling on Russia to withdraw its recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.