Translated material
To Russia through court
South Ossetia wants to go back to 1774
South Ossetia has found a new way to realize its long-held dream of joining Russia. The president of the unrecognized republic, Eduard Kokoity, yesterday in Vladikavkaz, during a joint meeting of the governments of North and South Ossetia, said that he was going to appeal to the Russian Constitutional Court on the issue of recognizing South Ossetia as part of Russia on the basis of historical documents.How can the Constitutional Court of Russia, authorized to determine the compliance of certain Russian legislative acts with the Constitution of its country, confirm the “constitutionality” of the treaty of 1774 on the voluntary entry of all Ossetia into the long-defunct Russian Empire (it was this document that Mr. Kokoity), is absolutely incomprehensible. Empress Catherine II, who, in fact, accepted the Ossetians into Russia, should have been invited as a witness to the hearings on this issue, if they really took place.
In recent years, Tskhinvali authorities have repeatedly tried to raise the issue of joining Russia - as a separate entity or by unifying with North Ossetia - in the more appropriate body for such discussions, the Russian State Duma. Corresponding appeals to the State Duma have been sent since the end of 2003. However, they were invariably ignored by parliamentarians and were never brought up to plenary sessions. Not finding adequate support in the Russian legislative branch (naturally, no one will give the State Duma the right to accept part of another sovereign state into the country), the South Ossetians decided to try to break into Russia through the courts. “We intend to submit an application to the Constitutional Court in the near future. There is a document about the entry of a united Ossetia into the Russian Empire in 1774. And there is no document on the secession of the southern part of Ossetia either from the Russian Empire or from the Russian Federation. Why should we today raise the question of joining the Russian Federation, when we never left it at all?” - said Eduard Kokoity. The head of the unrecognized republic recalled that today almost 95% of the citizens of South Ossetia (approximately 80 thousand) are citizens of Russia. Russian laws apply on the territory of South Ossetia, and the Russian ruble is in circulation. True, they also accept Georgian lari there.
The Chairman of the Parliament of South Ossetia, Znaur Gassiev, in an interview with Vremya Novostey, explained the republic’s desire to join Russia for emotional rather than rational reasons: “The wounds inflicted by the armed conflicts with Georgia in 1989-1992 and 2004 are still bleeding.” According to him, “hostility towards Tbilisi in Ossetian society is now at a fairly high level.”
In a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Georgian Parliament, Konstantin Gabashvili, noted that the head of South Ossetia “can turn to anyone, anywhere - even to his friends in the Solntsevo group. But it is becoming more and more obvious that Eduard Kokoity is losing his sense of reality and understanding of what is happening. The issue of the status of the Tskhinvali region will not be decided at his whim.” Tbilisi guarantees South Ossetia maximum autonomy rights within Georgia. Tbilisi tends to view statements by Tskhinvali leaders through the prism of the upcoming presidential elections in South Ossetia in December, that is, as elements of a PR campaign. It is possible that Georgia will prepare “its own” candidate for these elections.
In the Georgian-Ossetian negotiations, the issue of the status of South Ossetia, an autonomous region within the Georgian SSR that declared independence in 1990, has been postponed to the third stage. The first two are demilitarization of the conflict zone and socio-economic rehabilitation. To develop this three-stage program, a joint working group will need to be created. This issue will be discussed during a meeting of the co-chairs of the Joint Control Commission for the Georgian-Ossetian settlement - representatives of Tbilisi, Tskhinvali, Vladikavkaz and Moscow in the capital of North Ossetia on March 27-28 with the participation of the OSCE.
In addition, as First Deputy Chairman of the Government of South Ossetia Boris Chochiev told Vremya Novostei, at the initiative of the OSCE, a memorandum on the non-resumption of hostilities and security guarantees is being prepared for the negotiations in Vladikavkaz. Tbilisi says it does not intend to solve the problem by force. “We are not sure about this,” said Boris Chochiev. “There must be guarantees that military clashes that took place before will not be repeated.” According to him, the peace document must be signed by the highest political leaders of all four parties involved in the settlement process - Georgia, South Ossetia, North Ossetia and Russia. At the same time, Boris Chochiev noted that “Russian peacekeepers are required here as guarantors of the peace process.” Let us recall that on February 15, 2006, the Georgian parliament proposed to the government of the country to look for a replacement for Russian peacekeepers, whose actions Tbilisi so far considers ineffective.
According to Vremya Novostei, during the meeting in Vladikavkaz the issue of joint Russian-Georgian control over the Roki tunnel, which connects the two Ossetias, may arise. Tbilisi is concerned about the uncontrolled flow of goods (possibly even weapons) into South Ossetia through this tunnel. And therefore he proposes to apply the experience of Kyiv and Chisinau in Transnistria. Let us recall that on March 3, Ukraine introduced a new procedure for the transit of Pridnestrovian goods across the Moldovan-Ukrainian border, providing for the registration of Pridnestrovian goods in Moldova. In the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldavian Republic, this step was regarded as an “economic blockade.” “We are confident that Russia will not take such an ill-considered step as Ukraine did in relation to Transnistria, which has discredited itself as a mediator in the Transnistrian settlement,” the first deputy chairman of the government of South Ossetia told Vremya Novostey.