SOUTH OSSETIA WATER FLOWS AT LAST

C O N F I D E N T I A L TBILISI 001368

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DEPT FOR EUR DAS BRYZA AND EUR/CARC

E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/07/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL OSCE GG
SUBJECT: SOUTH OSSETIA WATER FLOWS AT LAST

REF: TBILISI 1278

Classified By: Ambassador John F. Tefft for reasons 1.4(b)&(d).


1. (C) On the evening of June 7, the South Ossetian de facto
authorities re-opened the drinking water pipeline in Java,
allowing water to flow south to villages controlled by the
Tbilisi-backed government of Dmitry Sanakoyev, and from there
farther south to the de facto authorities' "capital" of
Tskhinvali. Tskhinvali had been without water for two weeks

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after the water pipe went dry due to holes caused by both
storm damage and intentional puncturing by farmers seeking to
irrigate their fields (reftel). As recounted to us by OSCE
officials, on June 5 a Georgian crew finished repairing the
most serious problem in the pipe: a place in Kheiti, in the
Georgian enclave, where the pipe had dislodged from a
concrete support during recent storms. A joint team
consisting of OSCE staff and engineers, as well
representatives of both sides, viewed the repairs that day,
and OSCE believed that the pipe was at that point
sufficiently repaired to transport drinking water to
Tskhinvali. Nevertheless, de facto officials refused for two

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days to re-open the pipe in Java, where they blocked it
several days earlier, claiming they were not convinced that
the pipeline was in sufficient working order to prevent
further damage from the pressure of releasing the water. The
reversal of the South Ossetian position came after a day of
meetings involving Russia's chief negotiator on the conflict,
Yuri Popov.


2. (C) Water began reaching Tskhinvali overnight, and the
underground reservoirs outside the town were half-filled by
the morning of June 8. The water pressure was only about 20
percent of what was expected, however, and a joint team was
scheduled to inspect the pipe again June 8 to determine what
additional repairs may be needed. The planned inspection
fell through, however, as the two sides argued over how much
of the pipe to visit: the Georgians wanted to start at the
intake point in Edissi, while the South Ossetians said they
had agreed to start the inspection only farther south, near
Java. Negotiations continue.


3. (C) As the water standoff was playing out, tensions also
rose over the detention or kidnapping of a number of Georgian
citizens by the South Ossetians -- three in one incident and
reportedly two in another. Some have since been released,
but OSCE has not been able to confirm that all have been.
Georgian parliamentary leaders, in a briefing to the
diplomatic corps June 5, said these detentions were obviously
in retaliation for Georgia's arrest of an Ossetian taxi
driver for smuggling into Georgian-controlled territory two
Armenian citizens, to whom the de facto authorities had given
fraudulent documents purporting to prove they were residents
of South Ossetia. The Georgian MPs stressed that the
Ossetian driver had broken Georgian law, and his case would
be treated as a law enforcement matter.


4. (C) Comment: The initial cutoff of water in May does not
appear to have been intentional; farmers have been drilling
holes in the pipe for irrigation every summer for years,
causing annual water problems, and this year the storm damage
at Kheiti worsened the problem. Once it happened, however,
both sides tried to use the problem for political gain,
making it very hard to solve. In the beginning, the
Georgians refused to permit repair teams from Tskhinvali to
repair the pipe, making the Georgians look obstructionist and
doing them no favors with the population in Tskhinvali (to
whom Sanakoyev is trying to appeal) or with the international
community. Instead, the Georgians repaired it themselves,
but with a delay. Trying to counter the impression of
Georgian obstruction in their briefing with diplomats,
Georgian parliamentary leaders stressed that Georgia supports
rehabilitation of the water pipeline, which is on the list of
projects for the donors' economic rehabilitation program, and
argued that the main technical problem was with the intake in
the separatist-controlled north. By the end, however, it was
the South Ossetians who were dragging out the crisis,
probably in an attempt to derive some slight political gain.

TEFFT