Saakashvili Calls on World not to Accept Ethnic Cleansing
Speaking at a joint briefing with U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney in Tbilisi on September 4, President Saakashvili said ethnic cleansing had happened in two Georgian provinces, and called on the international community not to accept the results of these crimes.
Over the years, he said, more than 80% of the population had been expelled from Abkhazia and in the last few weeks two-thirds of South Ossetia’s territory had been “ethnically cleansed.”
“If anybody would try to legalize it, or would accept what has happened, basically, it will be accepting of human tragedies of hundreds of thousands of people,” Saakashvili said. “Ethnic cleansing in South Ossetia took place not only against ethnic Georgians, but also against ethnic Ossetians, who were considered to be disloyal.”
“So I call on all the responsible nations of the world not only to [not] accept this, but to continue condemn[ing] it and to continue uphold[ing] international law and justice,” Saakashvili said. “On our part, we are [a] peace-loving nation; we’ll do our best to avoid violence and we are committed to [a] peaceful resolution of all the issues, as we are committee to dialogue with everybody internally and with all the nations in [the] neighborhood and worldwide.”
He also said that Georgia was not alone.
“The great community of nations from the United States, Europe, Japan, other responsible nations, China are standing by Georgia, and I think we will endure, prosper and succeed,” Saakashvili said.
