ReliefWeb

(Tbilisi, January 27, 2003. Civil Georgia) - Commander of the Russian Border Guard Department Konstantin Totski said at the news briefing in Moscow that Russia welcomes OSCE decision to expand its border monitoring mission at the Russian-Georgian border.
"I hope after the increase in number of observers at the border, the reports of the OSCE border monitoring mission would become more trustworthy," Russian media sources quote Totski.

In December 2002 OSCE decided to extend its monitoring mission to the Daghestani section of the Georgian-Russian border in 2003. OSCE will have overall 144 observes at the Russian-Georgian border.

In December 1999, the OSCE began monitoring patrolling along the 82-kilometer border between Georgia and the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation.

At the request of the Georgian government, the OSCE agreed in December 2001 to extend monitoring to the 58km Ingush section of the Georgian-Russian border.

The monitors are unarmed and the Georgian authorities gave assurances to provide security for the OSCE monitors.