Saakashvili to Testify Before War Commission
A parliamentary commission studying the August war will listen to President Saakashvili at a session on November 28.
At the hearings, scheduled for 4pm local time, President Saakashvili is likely to focus on the events leading up to the war.
He has already spoken about his version of events that caused the war in a lengthy speech delivered before the group of lawmakers on August 25.
All the officials or former officials’ testimonies before the commission were largely in the line of those points which were put by Saakashvili in his August 25 speech.
Only a testimony by former Georgian ambassador to Russia, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, was an exception.
He told the commission on November 25 that although Russia was preparing for the war against Georgia trying to provoke Tbilisi, authorities in Tbilisi were also planning use of force to regain separatist regions.
MP Paata Davitaia, a lawmaker from the parliamentary minority, who chairs the commission, told journalists that the commission, among other things, would also ask the President about those accusations leveled by Kitsmarishvili.
The commission, whose official name is Temporary Commission to Study Russia’s Military Aggression and Other Actions Undertaken with the Aim to Infringe Georgia’s Territorial Integrity, is expected to adjourn hearings after the President’s testimony and to start drafting conclusions.
Some members of the commission, however, proposed to continue hearings and listen to military experts as well. “I do not think that the commission should end hearings after we listen to the President,” MP Levan Vepkhvadze of the Christian-Democratic Party said.
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