№19, 2008 New Caucasian triangle: Moscow - Tbilisi – StrasburgThe main theme at the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was the Russian-Georgian war. Debates concerning fights in South Ossetia lasted for the whole two days - it is an absolute time record for the PACE. As a rule, no matter what urgent theme is, no more than two-three hours are devoted to it in Strasburg. Week prior to the opening of session delegation of assembly headed by Luke Van den Brande visited the area of conflict and both Luke Van den Brande in his report marked that both sides had represented opposite positions concerning this conflict. That is why it was impossible to get the truth during the trip. Having listened to this report, the PACE in its final resolution, except for accusations of Nobody knows at the moment what consequences of the armed conflict for Georgian and Russian delegations will be. On the eve of the session, on September, 12, the group of 24 deputies brought in the query to the assembly, in which it suggested to deprive Russian delegation of part of plenary powers, in particular the voting right. Among those who signed this document, there were Ukrainian members of the parliament: Olga Gerasymyuk and Grygoriy Omelchenko. However the PACE did not support this decision, declaring that a dialog is necessary for the working out of the conflict. So the answer of the PACE to the regular war in Theme number two at the session became the question of union of Concluding plenary discussions one can mark that territorial conflicts become more ponderable on the continent. The Council of Europe, which is called to be the guarantor of maintenance of peace and democratic values, obviously, in the nearest future will search more influential levers of “education” of countries-violators, rather than acceptance of optional to implementation resolutions and recommendations. Otherwise this organization will repeat the fate of the Tetyana PASOVA |