TBILISI, May 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has violated the procedures for rotating its peacekeeping contingent in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
"The Foreign Ministry expresses its protest against the rotation of the Russian peacekeeping battalion, which has been conducted in violation of the bilateral Georgian-Russian agreements and the decisions adopted by the Joint Control Commission for the resolution of the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict," the ministry said in a statement.
The document said that despite numerous warnings Russia had once against rotated its troops through a checkpoint that is not under Georgian control. It said the troops passed through the Nizhny Zaramag checkpoint at the Roksky tunnel on the border between unrecognized South Ossetia and the Russian republic of North Ossetia.
The statement also said that the rotation had not been coordinated with the Georgian co-chairman of the JCC and that Russia was holding up talks on visas for its peacekeepers.
"Despite numerous proposals put forward by Georgia, Russia's is delaying the start to negotiations on the introduction of a visa regime for Russian peacekeepers in Georgia," the statement said, adding that Georgia considered these actions as a lack of respect in bilateral relations.
A Russian peacekeeping battalion has been stationed in the conflict zone as part of Joint Collective Peacekeeping Forces since bloody fighting in the early 1990s and is rotated once in six months. The latest rotation was scheduled for May 23 but was then put off until May 29.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement Tuesday condemning the May 27 deployment of Georgian troops in the conflict zone in an attempt to block Russian peacekeepers at checkpoints.
