Saakashvili Visits Kurta in South Ossetian Conflict Zone

President Saakashvili visited the village of Kurta in the South Ossetian conflict zone on February 12.

Kurta, located a few kilometers away from the breakaway South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, is now home to the Tbilisi-loyal, so-called alternative authorities of South Ossetia. In Kurta, President Saakashvili visited a local school where he reportedly attended a Georgian history class.

?When someone looks at our country, initially they think that it is a huge territory with two rival camps fighting with each other for centuries and now they should come and mediate between us. But you know better than I do that we have different situation. We have many disgraceful facts in our common history, but we have much more that unites us ? I do not want to say Georgians and Ossetians; because in your families you also have many ethnic Ossetians and it is not right to make dividing lines based on ethnicity,? Saakashvili said while addressing pupils in a school in Kurta.

?A patriot of Georgia is not something based on ethnicity; this is a psychological attitude of a person and a position of a citizen of Georgia. We should create a Georgia where there are as many patriots as there are people living in Georgia, regardless of their national background,? Saakashvili said.

This is Saakashvili’s second visit to the Georgian villages of the conflict zone in less than two months. He visited the Georgian village of Tamarasheni, less than a kilometer away from outskirts of Tskhinvali, on January 2.

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