The FINANCIAL — According to Civil Georgia, International community should take measures to stop “deepening conflict” in Akhalgori, MP Givi Targamadze of the ruling party, said on October 20.
“We were warning the international community that Akhalgori would certainly become a source of a new conflict,” MP Targamadze, who chairs the parliamentary committee for defense and security, told journalists. “Now, the signs of that are quite obvious. The international society should take decisive measures before this conflict deepens further and becomes irreversible.
Some Georgian lawmakers, including MP Paata Davitaia, who chairs the parliamentary commission studying causes of the August war, alleged on October 20, that the secessionist authorities in Akhalgori were willing to launch recruitment of locals for serving in the breakaway region’s army.
“The first stage involved passportization and if they [local population] did not take passports they were forced to leave the territory. The second stage is recruitment and if they do not obey, they will be forced to leave Akhalgori. These are actually new facts of ethnic cleansing. It confirms once again that aggression has not stopped,” MP Davitaia said on October 20.
Akhalgori, administratively, was part of the former autonomous district of South Ossetia. Like some of the Georgian villages around Tskhinvali, Akhalgori district, however, has never been under the secessionist authorities before the August war.
Meanwhile, Eduard Kokoity, the South Ossetian secessionist leader, said on October 20, while meeting with law enforcement officials that “tensions remain in Leningori” – referring to Akhalgori. The area was called as Leningori during the Soviet times after Lenin, but it was renamed by the Georgian authorities into Akhalgori after Tbilisi canceled the autonomous status of South Ossetia.
“Georgia has restarted provocative actions in the border areas,” Kokoity said, according to the South Ossetian Press and Information Committee. He has claimed that shootings were taking place almost every night in direction of the South Ossetian posts.
“And international monitors [referring to EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia] are performing their duties in a quite a strange way,” Kokoity continued. “It is obvious that they are biased, which does not help improvement of the situation; on the contrary it destabilizes the situation.”
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