Sarkozy Arrives in Tbilisi
People gathering on the Freedom Square, October 7, 2011. Photo: Guram Muradov/Civil.ge
French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who mediated ceasefire between Russia and Georgia three years ago, arrived in Tbilisi late on Friday afternoon – the last stop on his trip to the South Caucasus countries.
President Saakashvili welcomed the French counterpart in the Tbilisi airport.
Sarkozy will make an outdoor speech on Freedom Square, decorated with French, Georgian and EU flags.
The same square in the center of the Georgian capital became a venue of an outdoor address before the thousands of people by then U.S. President George W. Bush when he visited Georgia in May, 2005.
The French President is expected to call for a dialogue between Russia and Georgia.
Davit Bakradze, the Georgian parliamentary speaker, said he was not expecting any “strict statements” from Sarkozy about Russia’s failure to fulfill its commitments under the August 12, 2008 ceasefire agreement, mediated by Sarkozy.
“We should not expect any public strict statements – that’s natural, because he [Sarkozy] acts as a mediator,” Bakradze said on October 7.
“Not a public statement, but the fact itself that France and the French President continue to work on this issue is important,” he said.
Sarkozy, who visited Yerevan on October 6 and visited Baku on Friday before arriving in Tbilisi, is accompanied by French Minister for Industry and Energy Eric Besson; Minister for Cooperation Henri de Raincourt; Minister for Transport Thierry Mariani and Secretary of State for Foreign Trade Pierre Lellouche.
People starting gathering on the Freedom Square from the noon on Friday. Employees of various state agencies and ministries in Tbilisi have been instructed by their superiors to turn out on the Freedom Square and there have been multiple reports of local municipalities in provinces mobilizing their staff for ferrying them to Tbilisi for Sarkozy’s outdoor speech.
President Sarkozy first visited Tbilisi on August 12, 2008, when his country held EU’s rotating presidency, after negotiating ceasefire terms with Russian leadership in Moscow. Upon arrival he was offered by the Georgian side to join then Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, then Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and then Latvian Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis at a rally outside the Parliament, which had been called the previous day by President Saakashvili as an attempt to boost public moral in the face of invading Russian army. Ronald D. Asmus wrote in his book about war between Russia and Georgia, A Little War That Shook the World, that President Sarkozy turned down Saakashvili’s offer to address the rally outside the Parliament on Rustaveli Avenue, just next to the Freedom Square, “telling the Georgians that he had come not to give a speech but to end a war.”
President Sarkozy again visited Tbilisi in September, 2008 after traveling to Moscow when he was trying to clarify and specify some of the provisions of the August 12, 2008 ceasefire agreement; as a result a supplementary agreement of September 8, 2008 was produced.
Georgia repeatedly accuses Moscow of not fulfilling its commitments under the August 12 six-point ceasefire agreement, especially the one stipulating Russia to pull back its troops to the pre-war positions; after recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia considers that provision of the ceasefire as irrelevant, claiming “new reality” on the ground. Russia claims that with removal of its military checkpoint from the village of Perevi in October, 2010 the issue of its “alleged non-compliance” with Sarkozy-mediated ceasefire agreement has been “definitively closed” – the position Tbilisi condemns as “cynical.”
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