The ICPG is an international private organization with headquarters in Brussels, represented on five continents and established to strengthen the international community's capability to forecast, understand and act towards preventing and containing conflicts.
The ICPG is developing a report on the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and its group came to look into the situation on the spot. The ICPG representatives have already met Murad Dzhioev, foreign minister of the unrecognized republic, and some other officials of the Tskhinvali leadership.
IA Novosti-Georgia was told in the Georgian Defense Ministry that the Georgian peacekeeping contingent had undergone rotation in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone. Earlier, the Georgian Defense Ministry's peacekeeping units entered the conflict zone and replaced the Georgian Interior Ministry's units, which had performed their duties as part of the combined peacekeeping forces until recently.
According to the press service, the Defense Ministry's peacekeeping contingent totaling 500 had been specially trained under NATO standards by U.S. instructors to conduct peacekeeping operations.
At first, the peacekeepers were planned to arrive at the new duty station through Tskhinvali. However, the South Ossetian authorities did not let the convoy pass, so the personnel were dispatched to the deployment site via a bypass road between Georgian villages of the Small and Great Liakhva Gorges in the conflict zone (Eredvi-Tamarasheni).
Georgia's Defense Minister Georgi Baramidze, who visited villages of the Great Liakhva Gorge in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone, assured local residents that their security would be guaranteed. According to the minister, "if there are any provocations from South Ossetian units, the Georgian side will not defend any longer, but launch the offensive".
