TSKHINVAL. Sept 18 (Interfax) - At a meeting in Geneva with the co-chairs from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the South Ossetian delegation raised the issue of international observers flouting their mandate.
Some observers allow themselves to cross from Georgia into South Ossetia, the republic's presidential envoy for post-conflict regulation Murat Dzhioyev told journalists on Tuesday.
"At the previous Geneva round, I also stated that observers from the European Union [Monitoring] Mission [in Georgia] illegally visited the right-bank side of the Tsnelis village. With no mandate to work in South Ossetia, any infiltration of our republic is illegal. They have a mandate to work in areas abutting South Ossetia and Abkhazia but not in these countries themselves," Dzhioyev said.
Most of the meeting with the co-chairs focused on the situation in Tsnelis, he said.
"We gave the co-chairs copies of the Decree of the founding of the South Ossetian Autonomous Region as part of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. This is the first and only legal document describing the then autonomous region's borders which have since 1992 become the national border of the Republic of South Ossetia. We gave them several maps for them see clearly that our description of the South Ossetian border overlaps the contours contained in the Decree," Dzhioyev said.
South Ossetia is ready for dialogue with Georgia over de-escalation near Tsnelis, he said.
"Once again, we urged the co-chairs to use influence on Georgia so as not to escalate the situation and discuss all border issues as the result of dialogue," Dzhioyev said.
For their part, the co-chairs expressed concern over recent developments on the joint border.
They were visiting Tskhinval ahead of the next round of Geneva talks due in early October.