Red Cross looking for 47 missing people from Russia-Georgia war

Apr 29, 2010, 16:52 GMT

Geneva - The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it was searching for 47 people unaccounted for since the end of the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia.

The humanitarian organization arranged a meeting between Russia and Georgian governmental officials and authorities from South Ossetia to coordinate a hunt for information on the missing people.

The meeting earlier in the day took place near the de-facto border between Georgia and South Ossetia, a region which has broken away from Tbilisi.

It was unclear how many of the missing people were assumed dead.

'Under international humanitarian law, families have the right to know what happened to their missing relatives,' Megan Bassendale, an ICRC forensic adviser who participated in the meeting, said in a statement.

Officials with knowledge of the meeting said that relations between the parties who went to war in August 2008 were still tense and coordinating activities that required cross-border cooperation was difficult.

No date was fixed for holding further talks, but the officials said they expected more negotiations to take place in the near future.

An earlier unreported meeting on the missing people had taken place in February between the sides in Geneva.

The parties also hold occasional talks in Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but these have so far yielded few concrete results in solving wider political and humanitarian concerns.