Georgia commits to peaceful means to solve border issue

Davit Jalaghania. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Georgia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry says Georgia can only use peaceful and civilian methods against Russia’s action to move the border to the breakaway region South Ossetia.

Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Davit Jalaghania said on Monday that Russia is not being constructive in a context when Georgia is trying to move the dialogue in a constructive direction with its northern neighbor.

“This is an acute and painful issue. Unfortunately, this didn’t begin now. Russia, unfortunately, is continueing its own plan very purposefully. Sometimes it stops, sometimes this activity becomes intense, but the attitudes of the occupation regime don’t change,” he said, adding that Georgia has only one lever, and that is peaceful and diplomatic methods.

Jalaghania says these methods mostly aren’t efficient and dragged out in time, but need more efforts and patience. Georgia’s action will be intensive dialogue with partner countries and organizations.

“The ceasefire agreement [from 2008] defines an obligation that Russia must step back and leave the occupied territories. If we count these international obligations in our levers, then we should deal with civil force and we must be more optimistic,” he added.

In recent weeks, Russian soldiers have restarted work to install wire fences on Georgian-controlled territory at the de facto border with South Ossetia, creating problems for locals.