On 17 January 2018, the 52nd meeting of the joint Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) was held in Gali town under the chairmanship United Nations, with the participation of Georgian, Russian, Abkhaz and EUMM (European Union Monitoring Mission) representatives.
The overall security situation on the ground, since the previous IPRM meeting of 27 November 2017, was assessed as calm and stable. The participants have again highlighted the importance of the hotline for information exchange purposes, and most essentially for prevention of incidents. The Chair and participants welcomed the recent release of several detainees, whose cases had been discussed at the previous IPRM meetings.
In line with the provisional agenda, the participants followed up on matters discussed earlier, including the murder case of May 2016 and one detention case of April 2017. In addition, they discussed new agenda points - the issues of “borderization” and military exercises. In relation to the military exercises, the participants were urged to be transparent and to implement one of the agreed measures of voluntary exchange of advance notice on sensitive activities for confidence building purposes, which is a standing agenda point. Furthermore, the participants discussed in detail several other issues, including patrolling along the line of control and previously agreed “code of conduct” of patrols.
The 52nd IPRM meeting took place in a constructive and business-like atmosphere. Discussions on all agenda points were useful and substantive.
It was agreed to hold the next meeting on 27 February 2018.