TSKHINVAL, April 27. /TASS/. South Ossetia at a meeting within the framework of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms (IPRM) pointed to the latest provocations by Georgian police, who purposefully violate the state border and provoke South Ossetian border guards to retaliate, South Ossetia’s chief delegate Yegor Kochiyev told the media on Thursday following a meeting held at the South Ossetian-Georgian border near the village of Ergneti, the Gori district of Georgia.

"During the meeting, important issues were raised, which mainly concerned violations of the republic's border by Georgian police. There is an impression that Georgian police were deliberately provoking our border guards to retaliate. Such incidents were brought to the attention of international observers. Starting from mid-March and to mid-April, seven such provocations by Georgian police were recorded. Moreover, all occurred at one place, near the South Ossetian village of Mugut," said Kochiyev.

He said that Georgian police used to drive up to the fence which in reality was not the state border line, but it was established deep inside the territory of the Republic of South Ossetia for servicing technical facilities.

"Georgian police have repeatedly taken the liberty of approaching these facilities. On one occasion they were accompanying a representative of a non-governmental organization, one David Katsarava, who made a video recording there. He was using abusive language towards our border guards and later he uploaded this recording to social media," Kochiyev said. "The Georgian side repeatedly denied this, saying we had no proof. In response, we provided photographs and a link to that very video in the social networks."

The head of the delegation said that South Ossetia had stressed the impermissibility of such actions by Georgian law enforcers to point out that the mission of police was to maintain law, order and calm. In the meantime, in this particular case "they clearly provoked border guards and also brought a person who was behaving inappropriately."

IPRM meetings have been held regularly since 2009. They are traditionally attended by representatives from South Ossetia, Russia and Georgia and are brokered by the OSCE and the EU. They traditionally discuss incidents near the South Ossetian-Georgian border.