"Russia is our neighbour and we should have good relations with it," Ilia noted.
In Georgia the WCC delegation also met Armenian Orthodox and Baptist leaders, a member of parliament and a government minister responsible for refugees, the country's public defender, member agencies of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International and displaced people living in camps and schools.
Humanitarian situation
About two-thirds of the 150,000 people displaced into Georgia by the conflict have now returned to their homes. Most of the nearly 50,000 still displaced are housed in school buildings. Even as more durable solutions become urgent, ACT member agencies and local church aid workers told the WCC delegation of many gaps in meeting immediate needs.
"With schools in Georgia scheduled to open in one week, the people we met do not know what will happen next," said Rev Laszlo Lehel, director of Hungarian Inter-Church Aid and representing ACT on the delegation. Some 26,000 of these people are from South Ossetia, with little immediate prospect of returning home.
Lia Gogitze, a woman from South Ossetia living in a Tbilisi school, told the delegation, "We lived so well there with our orchards and livestock. It was like a small paradise. Here we share one cup." Satellite photos show her village, Kemerti, as one of dozens of communities in the enclave heavily damaged by fire in the days since the major fighting ceased.
To visit the enclave the delegation is making a 4,000-kilometer detour via Moscow and North Ossetia. When they reach the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, they will be just 40 kilometers from where they were on their first day in Georgia.
In South Ossetia the ecumenical visitors will meet with church leaders, local officials and the recently displaced residents who have now mostly returned from North Ossetia. Also of concern are the ethnic Georgian residents still thought to be in the enclave after weeks of violence and many reports of looting, arson and forced evictions.
The trip will end in Moscow with visits to the Russian Orthodox Church and the government. In addition to Nifon, de Clermont and Lehel, the delegation includes Rev Elenora Giddings-Ivory and Jonathan Frerichs from the WCC secretariat in Geneva.
