The de facto government of the tiny, breakaway enclave of South Ossetia is taking on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had to roll up its mission to Georgia in 2009 after member-state Russia refused to agree to extend the organization's mandate.
Amidst an international push to allow the OSCE into Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the de facto authorities in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, say they plan to take the organization to an international court. Tskhinvali claims that the group not only failed to provide warnings about the brewing conflict that led to the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, centered mostly in South Ossetia, but, also, that the OSCE’s regional office refused to provide shelter to South Ossetian children who were trying to escape the hostilities.
“We have the evidence proving that during the war in August 2008 the representatives of the OSCE mission in Tskhinvali did not let into their bunker children who were trying to take refuge there,” claimed de facto presidential aide Boris Chochiev, Tskhinvali's former chief envoy to talks with Tbilisi. “By keeping silent, this organization also helped Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia.”
In other words, the OSCE is not going back to South Ossetia anytime soon.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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