VIENNA, June 4 (UPI) -- Russia's deputy foreign minister said Thursday that there should be an international monitoring presence in Georgia to maintain stability.
Grigory Karasin, Russian deputy foreign minister, addressed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Thursday and called on the international community to reach a compromise on military monitoring officers in Georgia, the OSCE reported.
The United Nations and the OSCE have been monitoring the volatile border areas separating Georgia and the country's separatist South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions following the violent August 2008 conflict with Russia.
Discussions on the future of the OSCE presence in Georgia were recently suspended because of ongoing disagreements among OSCE member countries. Karasin said that a "common language" was needed for a compromise on a future monitor mission in Georgia.
"Stability and security in such a sensitive region can be improved with the involvement of the international community," Karasin said in a statement.
"In this sense, we consider the Geneva discussions, based on the (Nicolas) Sarkozy-(Dmitry) Medvedev agreement, to be a useful leverage for the decision-making at the United Nations and the OSCE."
