VIENNA (AFP)--The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced Thursday it had decided to extend the mandate, which expires next week, of 20 military monitors sent to Georgia last year to oversee a ceasefire with Russia.
"The 56 OSCE participating States agreed today to extend until 30 June the presence of the Organization's unarmed military monitoring officers in Georgia," the OSCE said in a statement.
The decision was immediately welcomed by the current chairwoman of the OSCE, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis.
"This decision.. shows that all States agree that the Organization is a critical part of international efforts to secure lasting stability in the region," she said in the statement.
The mandate of the 20 OSCE military monitoring officers, who were deployed in September to oversee the ceasefire between Georgia and Russia, was due to expire on Feb. 18 as Russia initially objected to a three-month extension.
The OSCE agreed in August to send "up to one hundred" MMOs to Georgia but only 20 were finally deployed in September around South Ossetia, the Georgian rebel region at the center of the conflict between Moscow and Tbilisi.
Thursday's decision will have no effect, however, on the future of the OSCE's wider diplomatic mission to Georgia, whose mandate expired on Dec. 31, the organization said.
A spokesperson said some 180 staff of the mission, which began in 1992, were still on the ground.