Mikheil Saakashvili:

"We have worked for a month and a half, we have our position and I think that every normal person around the world has the same position - there was a barbarian aggression undertaken against Georgia in August, which was prepared long ago and the aim of it was to break Georgia into peaces.

Practically Georgia still remains under the results of this aggression.

We have worked together with the EU and reached a step-by-step agreement.

Everything what Russians did was fully illegal.

The first illegal step they made was the creation of buffer zones.

The second issue is returning of status-quo ante and we had not returned to the August 7 status-quo ante and we plan to work over this issue with the French and other partners during the Geneva talks.

Finally, this is de-occupation of Georgia.

Two territories of Georgia are occupied by the Russian military machine, by the state of Russia.

They carried out illegitimate legal acts against these territories.

Georgia will never surrender to aggression and occupation.

The fight of the Georgian people for freedom and de-occupation will continue, till the very last Russian soldier leaves Georgian territory, no one can have any illusion about it.

We will never agree with the fact that Russia tried to break Georgia into several pieces by barbarian methods used in 18, 19 and 20th centuries.

We had many attempts in Georgian history, names of those only remain in the minds of historians, Georgia still exists and will exist forever.

We are very grateful of our European friends, we are grateful because the whole Europe is involved in this process.

Georgian people for the first time in their history felt that we are not alone regarding the issues about Georgia. We were not left alone in this crisis.

I want to underline very many attempts made by French diplomacy and it's huge involvement. I want to specially underline that European Parliamentary Assembly was the first Parliamentary body, which approved ethnic cleansing carried out on the Georgian occupied territory. 15 years passed before General Assembly indicate the fact of ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia. In the resolution of Council of Europe very important part for me was that ethnic cleansing was fixed in a very timely manner.

We are requesting from EU to send mission to Georgia to study facts of ethnic cleansing. We will never surrender to the results of ethnic cleansing.

I want to greet you once again and thank you for coming to our country''.

Bernard Kouchener:

"In those very hard days I was tasked by Sarkozy and I came here from Moscow as a EU representative, to reach the termination of war.

I think that we had possibly achieved termination of war on time and this was the very first task what we had to do. We have reached the cease-fire.

Definitely I agree with the President Saakashvili that we had not reached everything yet.

This document comprises everything, but I want to express my gratitude to you - you yourself mentioned that this process would continue on October 15 because we still have a long way to go.

We spoke about the adjacent zones first and the adjacent zones have been emptied. But I know it very well and I agree with you that everything has not finished yet.

I know that Akhalgori region still remains to be liberated, but ladies and gentlemen, Mr. President, you have expressed wish to bring EU monitors here to Georgia.

We were able to achieve this and they are in Georgia already and they have proved that Russians are leaving territories and that document is in the process of fulfillment.

I want to note that this is not a completed process and we still have to achieve progress and go to the end.

We will continue negotiations in Geneva with experts, EU and other partner organizations will also get involved in the negotiation process.

I think that all required measures will be taken for achieving this process.

Of course we have not achieved everything yet, but we continue this process. I have met the IDPs today and I know that everything has not been achieved yet, we must do everything to return these people back to their houses. France is ready to continue this on behalf of EU.

This Monday we have EU session in Luxemburg. I will present my report about the results I saw in Georgia".

Journalist: "Mr. Bernard, you said that everything has not been achieved yet, the occupants still remain on the Georgian territory. Do you think Russia fulfilled its obligations? Have they reached August 7 status-quo ante?"

Bernard Kouchener: " Akhalgori remained a problem, the presence of the Russian troops in the village of Perevi was also a problem and I was discussing this issue. Perevi is a village in the western part of administrative border of breakaway South Ossetia, which is located in the Sachkhere district. But all conflict zones were discussed and the forces must leave all these territories".

Journalist: "EU has initiated a diplomatic process of termination of war, is Russia fulfilling its obligations?

Georgians say that this is a Georgian region and it does not belong to the South Ossetian administration territory. This is Georgian position, what happens if Russians will not fulfill this obligation?

Bernard Kouchener: "We had many different meetings - Sarkozy, Medvedev, Saakashvili and I think it was a mistake when Sarkozy and Medvedev stated after their meeting that Russians had withdrawn their forces from the adjacent conflict zones of the Georgian territory.

Now we say that it is true that they had left adjacent territories but they still remain in Akhalgori region.

This still remains to be a problem and this is why we say that we will continue talks in Geneva."

Communications Office
of the President of Georgia