Georgia has set up a working group comprising Georgian officials and members of South Ossetia's "alternative government", which was established in Georgia for the region, and says its offer will be based on the autonomy model of South Tyrol, an ethnically mixed German-Italian region.
The minister, Zurab Antadze, proposed Thursday holding the next meeting of the Mixed Control Commission, which he co-chairs, in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
However, Russia's co-chairman Yuri Popov said that the representatives from South Ossetia Boris Chochiyev and the neighboring Russian ethnic Ossetian region of Alania (North Ossetia) Murat Tkhostov had already agreed to an earlier proposal from Russia to hold the meeting in Tskhinvali, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic, to discuss water shortages.
The situation in the conflict zone recently deteriorated over damaged water pipelines leading to South Ossetia, which left 70 villages and 44,000 hectares of farmland without water. And gunfire was exchanged when Georgia started building a road in the area without consulting local authorities. Russian peacekeepers stopped the construction and urged consultations between the two sides.
South Tyrol, officially called Trentino-Alto Adige/Sudtirol, is formally part of Italy, annexed to it after WWI, but ethnically dominated by German speakers and heavily influenced by Austria ever since the two countries signed the 1948 Paris Agreement to give the region legislative and executive power.
In 1990-1992 armed conflict followed South Ossetian's secession from freshly independent Georgia, in Georgian capital Tbilisi. South Ossetia's officials have repeatedly called for its recognition by Moscow, with subsequent admission to the Russian Federation.
