UN and EU officials speak positive on Gali meeting

The today's five-sided meeting on prevention and investigation of incidents, held in the Gali office of the UN Mission with participation of representatives from Abkhazia, Georgia, Russia, United Nations and European Union was positively assessed by Johan Verbeke, special envoy of UN Secretary General for Georgia, and Hans-Jorg Haber, head of the EU's observation mission in Georgia.

Before 2007, similar meetings in the Georgian-Abkhazian were held on the weekly bases under presidency of the Command of CIS Collective Forces and under the aegis of the United Nations.

A new participant of the meeting was the European Union, whose observers are monitoring the Georgian bank of Ingur River that separates Abkhazia from Georgia.

The meeting discussed the technical issues related to further incident-preventing meetings, namely: the frequency of meetings, circle of participants and their number, venues, language of the talks and who will chair them.

The parties have agreed to hold such meetings every other week, meanwhile, on Tuesdays. The next meeting will take place on July 28 in Gali. Meetings will be attended by 4-6 persons from each party.