Georgia offers residents of South Ossetia to move freely across the border

The official Tbilisi has allowed residents of South Ossetian to freely cross the administrative border. The initiative was announced on December 10 at the meeting of the mechanism to prevent incidents, involving representatives of the Observers' Mission of the Council of Europe (OMCE), OSCE, Georgia, South Ossetia and Russia in the Georgian village of Ergneti.

In order to cross the border, as reported by the participants in the meeting, residents should warn the Georgian militia 10 days in advance. The announcement has been already posted at the local border crossing, but nothing is known about the reaction of the South Ossetian party, the "Echo of the Caucasus" reports.

The results of the meeting were anticipated also by parents of missing Georgian soldiers. After the August War, relatives are unsuccessfully searching Otar Sukhitashvili, Giya Romelashvili and Zaza Birtvelashvili. "We want only one thing - to know whether our sons are alive or not," said the relatives.

However, Shota Utiashvili, head of the information-analytical department of the MIA of Georgia, could tell nothing encouraging. "We hope that the people who are in prison out there will soon return to their homes. But so far, nothing has been decided, and I don't want to give false hopes," Mr Utiashvili told the "News-Georgia".

The next meeting within the above mechanism for preventing incidents in South Ossetia will take place on January 21, 2011.