Saakashvili Vows to Reunite Georgia

President Saakashvili said on September 29 that Georgia would be unified before his term in office expires.

Saakashvili?s first term will expire next year; he will then seek reelection for a second five-year term.

Saakashvili said that he planned to restore the country?s territorial integrity ?not through the emergence of new Kitovanis? ? referring to Tengiz Kitovani, an ex-defense minister who led Georgian forces into Abkhazia in 1992, prompting armed conflict.

?We will do it,? Saakashvili said, ?through patience, through strength, through reforms and international support and through democracy and transparency.?

The reference to Kitovani was apparently aimed at Irakli Okruashvili, an ex-defense minister and former ally of Saakashvili.

Two days before his arrest on September 27, Okruashvili said as Defense Minister he had had a plan, which, he said, involved only ?a small-scale operation? with minimum casualties to reclaim South Ossetia. The plan, if executed, would, he claimed, have seen South Ossetia reintegrated by spring 2006. But the plan, he said, was rejected by Saakashvili.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)