Weapons into Water: OSCE rehabilitates water canal in exchange for weapons in Georgia

TBILISI, 17 April 2002 - Under supervision of the Mission to Georgia of the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE), repair works on a 30-km irrigation canal running through both Georgian and Ossetian villages in the zone of conflict, will start immediately.

"The Irrigation Project is exactly the type of project we are aiming at: In exchange for weapons voluntary handed over to the Joint Peacekeeping Forces, the international community is ready to compensate in form of small, but targeted projects designed to improve basic community needs. On top of that this project helps to reduce frictions over water - or rather lack of it", said Ivar Vikki, Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Georgia on the occasion of signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on 17 April 2002 in Tskhinvali.

Signatories are - apart from the OSCE Mission - the UK Embassy in Tbilisi who financed the project, representatives of the Georgian and Ossetian communities as well as the Commander of the Joint Peace Keeping Forces in the Georgian-Ossetian zone of conflict. The project aims at cleaning up and rehabilitating an irrigation system, thus increasing water-flow capacity.

The project forms part of the joint efforts of the OSCE Mission and the Command of the Joint Peacekeeping Forces, to reduce the number of arms in the region. Earlier this year, the Mission had given computers to a Tskhinvali school in exchange for 36 rockets handed over by the pupils' parents.

Within the framework of the Programme of Voluntary Hand-over of Small Arms and Light Weapons, more than 1.300 units of arms and ammunition and 210 kg of pure explosives have been collected by the JPKF and so far more than two-thirds of them destroyed. The OSCE Mission to Georgia will continue to seek support among international donors in order to collectively compensate needs among the population for arms handed over.