South Ossetia warned Georgia against using international mechanisms to influence the political landscape of the former Georgian republic, which Tbilisi seeks to regain control over, the South Ossetian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister David Dzhalaganiya said on Monday that “Tbilisi is unable to directly interfere in the development of events in South Ossetia” and “Georgia will try doing it by using existing international mechanisms.”
The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it would be considering such attempts “as direct interference into the internal affairs of a sovereign state.”
The ministry reiterated that Georgia has had no right to control South Ossetia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The former Georgian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s. Georgian forces attempted to bring South Ossetia back under central control in August 2008 but were repelled by the Russian military in what is called the 5-day war.
