NGOs from Russia, South Ossetia and Georgia meet in Yerevan within Strasbourg dialogue

On February 20-21, the capital of Armenia hosted a meeting of NGO leaders from Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia within the limits of the Strasbourg dialogue. They discussed ways of further interaction of civil societies in conflict zones.

The main issue that could promote further meaningful dialogue, if duly addressed, was the topic of prisoners kept both in Georgian and Ossetian prisons.

"Citizen of Georgia Kobaladze is in South-Ossetian prison for a long time. The Georgian authorities have no interest to that. The situation with crossing the border in the Akhalgori District is also unclear," said Malkhaz Gulashvili, chairman of the National-Orthodox Movement of Georgia.

In his turn, Kosta Dzugaev, chairman of board of the Centre of Information Technologies "Intellectual Resources", has noted that "today 39 citizens of South Ossetia are illegally kept in Georgian prisons."

Representatives from Georgia answered that they did not know bout this number of prisoners of war, but promised to publish in mass media the names of all imprisoned citizens from South Ossetia.

Both parties noted that concrete interaction steps towards release of prisoners will allow overcoming the first barrier in normalization of Georgian-South-Ossetian relations.

At the end of the roundtable, the participants agreed about further cooperation: exchange of objective information, public opinion, monitoring of the situation by means of expert's travels within the Strasbourg dialogue, search of missing persons and release of prisoners.

Activists of Abkhazian NGOs refused to take part in the Strasbourg dialogue.