Georgian president: Bush’s support is much more ponderable than Putin’s

Read it in Russian

President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili believes that the upcoming G8 summit in St. Petersburg will have determining significance for the world politics. As a REGNUM correspondent reports, the Georgian president made the statement at a news conference in Tbilisi on July 11, speaking about outcomes of his visit to Washington and a meeting with US President George Bush that took place on July 5.

According to Saakjashvili, it was “a visit of historical significance paid at historic time.” At the same time, the Georgian president notes that the Georgian-American relations are very intensified, citing as an example the fact that within two and a half years he had three official meetings with the US president, not counting other meetings with Washington officials, which is one of the most intensive figures in the world. “Many presidents come to Washington, and President Bush does not meet each of them. Not long before my visit to the US, several other presidents had been there and, as a rule, their meeting confined to meetings with the state secretary or other level,” Saakashvili is quoted as saying.

As the Georgian president stresses, his last visit was not limited to negotiations with George Bush. “There was a separate meeting with the US vice president, where US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defense secretary and energy secretary, other officials, we had talks with practically all top officials of the US administration,” Mikhail Saakashvili notes.

According to the Georgian leader, his visit to the US was a historical one “because of the moment, at which we are all now.” He stressed that “the G8 summit would be a decisive one in terms of where the world will go in the near future” and that “everything is being decided right up at the moment”: “What is this world? Is it where everything is determined by weapons, money, oil, big strategic or global interests, and small countries even do not have their own place? Where bargains are stricken behind them, and their fate is determined by others? Or is it the world, where moral, principles, freedom of various nations are equally important as it has been declared by the free world for decades? Will small countries have their say in this world?”

Mikhail Saakashvili finds it very symbolic that before the G8 summit he had a meeting first with Russian President Vladimir Putin and then with George Bush, which was the last meeting of the US president with a foreign visitor before the summit, which coincided with the US Independence Day and Bush’s 60^th anniversary. “I think it is a clear indicator for everyone of the role of our small country in the big world politics. We are actors not only in protecting and forming our fate, but because our people are special, and because of special events in our new history, we participate in forming the biggest world interests and policies, in determining, and what the main thing is, what our place in this all is,” the Georgian president stresses.

“I do not have claims to be a world actor, or for our country to become a world actor. It goes here about the fact that we have our own interests, our small interests that are very big for us. Our country has turned out to be in the center of global interests. We have very powerful friends now, and it has its price: we have very strong enemies too. And I want all of us to comprehend it properly,” Saakashvili notes.

Besides, the Georgian president notes that the meeting with the US president was a historical one also because “at the first time the president of the only world super power fixed openly and without any pre-conditions his direct support of Georgia joining NATO.” Saying that “he knows very well what it is the price of it,” Mikhail Saakashvili stressed that “it is a proposal of quite different security guarantees to Georgia from the most powerful state in the world.” He stressed that “the US president quite openly stated his support of Georgia’s territorial integrity,” and that “on the next day there was a reply from President Putin, who spoke about comparing Kosovo with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which means breaking Georgia into parts, but the US president’s support is much more ponderable, and an unambiguous answer was given to such statements from Moscow: it was stressed that it is said only ad notam of Georgia’s neighbors.”