A chairman of monitoring committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE), Dick Marty, will visit Moscow and Tbilisi on December 20-21 in lead up to hearings on consequences of the August, 2008 war.

Swiss lawmaker, Dick Marty, will meet Russian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Grigory Karasin, as well as with the Russian delegation to PACE in Moscow on December 20. Next day he will hold meetings in Tbilisi, including with Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Reintegration Eka Tkeshelashvili and with the Georgian delegation to PACE.

The issue, known in PACE as “consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia”, is debated time after time in the Assembly since October, 2008, when PACE adopted a resolution on the consequences of the war, among other things, also calling on Russia to withdraw its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Since then PACE monitoring committee has been following implementation of the obligations in respect of Georgia and Russia originating from that resolution. Two other resolutions were taken by PACE since then on the same issue - one in January, 2009 and another one in September, 2009.

PACE monitoring committee is scheduled for hold hearing on the consequences of the August war in mid-January, 2011.

Tbilisi tries to keep this separate file within PACE on “consequences of the war between Georgia and Russia” high on the Assembly’s agenda. The Georgian side was strongly against of a proposal this year to drop this separate file and to make obligations originating from the three resolutions on the matter part of a regular monitoring of Russia and Georgia separately.