Following accusations from both Georgian and de facto South Ossetian authorities about incidents near Zemo Nikozi on 29 July, the EUMM called an informal ad hoc meeting on Friday, 31 July, in Ergneti within the framework of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM). Georgian and de facto South Ossetian representatives attended. For different reasons, the OSCE and the Russian representatives were not able to attend.
Participants repeated their respective versions of events. EUMM urged all participants to exercise restraint in the run up to the anniversary of last August’s events and called for a fully fledged IPRM meeting to continue dialogue as soon as possible.
Finally, EUMM stressed that all should make effective use of the hotline system to ensure that such disputes are handled quickly in the future.
