Saakashvili: War Resumption Chances Low

President Saakashvili said that possibility of resumption of hostilities had been reduced, but nothing was yet fully guaranteed and added that it would be impossible “to kneel down” Georgia in case of unity and stability.

“I know one thing – our ill-wisher knows for sure – a fortress can be broken from within inside; it is impossible to make Georgia kneel down if Georgia is united and if Georgia is stable,” he said while speaking at a ceremony of handing over houses to families of Georgian soldiers, fallen during the August war.

“Today we are doing everything for peace,” he continued. “We are doing our best to ensure that nothing threatens the peace. We know the value of internal and external peace better than others. We should understand that after number of economic processes that have developed; as far as we have much greater international support than we had before the August war; after the situation has changed completely both inside and outside Georgia, the probability of resumption of war has reduced; but indeed there cannot be absolute guarantee.”

He then said that Georgia dared to do “what many countries could not dare in the past.”

“Those tanks, which rolled into Georgia, managed to occupy without much resistance Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Afghanistan, much bigger countries than Georgia, half Europe. Until now many Europeans can not understand how Georgians could even think that it is possible to struggle for independence against 3,000 tanks; 200 planes; 80,000 invaders,” Saakashvili said.

He said that “self-sacrificing struggle” of the Georgian army, combined with the international support prevented the Russian army from capturing over Tbilisi.

“If not the involvement of the European Union and if not the fact that the 6th Fleet of the United States moved towards Georgia and if not the U.S. President’s direct, open, unprecedented warning – since 1961 there had been no such confrontation between Russia and the United States; if not all these, today Georgian would not have been independent,” Saakashvili said.

He also said that the Georgian people should pay tribute to the memory of the fallen soldiers, by creating “a modern, successful European country, where our children will grow up in the best European educational institutions, where freedom and democracy will be similar to that in Europe, where cities and villages will be better than in western Europe and where future will be protected and secured.”

“Of course, such country will solve all its strategic tasks; of course, nothing will threaten the unity of such country – this is our historic challenge and this is our immediate task,” Saakashvili added.

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