MOSCOW, June 20 (RIA Novosti) - The interior ministers of Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia will meet on June 22 in the self-proclaimed republics capital, Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian interior minister said Tuesday.
"Today we received information from Georgia that [Vano] Merabishvili is ready to come to Tskhinvali on Thursday for talks on coordination between Georgian and Tskhinvali law-enforcement bodies," Mikhail Mindzayev said.
South Ossetia with another breakaway region, Abkhazia, declared independence from Georgia in 1992 after bloody conflicts following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian troops are stationed in the conflict zone as part of Joint Collective Peacekeeping Forces.
"We hope the meeting will be held, since all the steps Georgia has been taking indicate obvious preparations for a military solution to the conflict," Mindzayev said. "And if he [Merabishvili] comes, we will manage to agree on some things."
Mindzayev said the situation was currently very tense, "as the Georgian interior ministry recently deployed 15 illegal check points in the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict."
"From the way these checkpoints have been located we can say that Georgians are gaining a beachhead around Tskhinvali," he said. "We also have information that the Georgian police was ordered to move to the conflict zone. This, as I believe, is done as a preparatory stage for the military resolution of the conflict."
Russia's Foreign Ministry May 27 condemned the entry of Georgian special forces into the zone of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict. The ministry said Georgian special forces units had covertly infiltrated the zone and cut off a contingent of Russian peacekeepers in the area, which it said was a violation of existing agreements and a provocation.
