Yesterday, while the JCC meeting was once again disrupted in Moscow, the epic continued in South Ossetia with the detention by the Georgian side of humanitarian cargo from Russia for residents of Ossetian villages. Negotiations on this issue remain fruitless.
Let us remind you that on Tuesday, near the Georgian village of Ergneti, a convoy of Russian trucks with humanitarian aid was detained. Tskhinvali states that Russian humanitarian aid through the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations was delivered on July 10 on nine heavy-duty KamAZ trucks, and the cargo included 105 tons of flour, 30 tons of baby food, 10 tons of medicines and five diesel mini-power plants. The governor of the Shida Kartli region, Mikhail Kareli, insisted that the cargo was contraband and demanded that it be cleared through customs in accordance with Georgian laws. The commander of the peacekeeping forces, Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, demanded that the cargo be immediately delivered to its destination, and having received a refusal, he ordered the Russian military to prepare dry rations and camp at the site of the incident. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania publicly supported the position of Mikheil Kareli. Yesterday, the Georgian side continued to demand that the cargo be registered in accordance with Georgian legislation. General Svyatoslav Nabzdorov again refused to do this on principle, citing the fact that humanitarian cargo is not subject to customs clearance anywhere in the world and, moreover, no duties can be charged. The situation has reached a dead end again.
Official Tskhinvali, in turn, makes it clear that problems may arise with the delivery of goods to the Georgian villages of the Liakhvi Gorge in South Ossetia. In this case, about 10 thousand Georgians living in South Ossetia could be torn away from the “great Georgian land,” which would give the Tbilisi opposition a reason to accuse President Saakashvili of helplessness. Perhaps Moscow and Tskhinvali presented an unspoken ultimatum to Tbilisi: either Georgia will restore the free movement of goods flows beyond its control from Russia to Georgia through South Ossetian territory, or Tbilisi will lose access to the Georgian villages of South Ossetia and the only possibility of supplying them - through the city of Tskhinvali. There is a pretext: Georgia was the first to delay humanitarian cargo for Ossetian villages.
VLADIMIR NOVIKOV, Tbilisi

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 127 dated July 15, 2004, p. 10

And the cargo is still there