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9/12/2008
The President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili held a government session

We have gathered the members of the government here to distribute functions among the authorities on the 18th months stabilization plan and to find out how the process of execution of plan is going on.

Our country went through huge stress - Georgia went through incredible aggression. Not many countries in the world could resist it. If it had happened two years earlier, the state apparatus would be destroyed and its statehood would be under question.

Now our country could survive. This was a massive intervention against our people, against our main values and the freedom of our country.

The threat exists even today, the occupants are in the strategic parts of our territories.

Threats, that I heard from the occupant country's capital are unprecedented and can be characterized as cynical and the rhetoric is and various threats that come from them must be viewed seriously.

In those conditions, when the enemy has not yet left our mother-land our task is to care for our victims, to restore destroyed country and to raise our nation up.

The main mission of our government and our state apparatus is to take care of our victims, those who lost their houses, who lost their jobs and their incomes.

I, as the President of Georgia take full responsibility for everything that had happened before intervention and aggression, full responsibility for the revival of Georgia, for the future of Georgia and its development in the coming months and years.

I personally take responsibility for the revival that we all have to lead, in order to come out of this situation and be stronger - overcome the results of aggression and war.

We do our best, but will try to work faster to help everyone who needs our help.

The most important for us now is to restore peace and stability.

We did not start this was and we will do everything not to let the war against Georgia and aggression be repeated.

Throughout this period we fought together to defend Georgia from this big aggression, now we have to work together to defend our country.

When the country needed it we stood together, the political forces and institutions put aside existing diversities, issues and we stood together to save the statehood of Georgia.

We have a greater and more important challenge now, to turn our country into a long-term, successful unified mechanism.

We are still assessing damages that our country underwent, because of the Russian aggression.

We have tens of thousands of people, whose houses were completely destroyed, or very seriously damaged, rubbed. hundreds of businesses suffered greatly and thousands of businesses were affected indirectly. We have destroyed bridges, broken roads, infrastructure, which is absolutely destroyed.

Winter is close by, and I tasked the government that in the period before winter - non of these people must be left without a house, roof and warmth.

Many schools, kinder-gardens need reconstruction, agriculture and its infrastructure need reconstruction. We have to help those enterprises that were going to start work, they must start work by all means. This process must not stop and new enterprises must be created.

Service, commerce, and the state services must start functioning. I think we have no problems from this point of view and state institutions work with full spectrum.

We started the revival even in the process of war.

I appreciate the work of those people who worked heroically, did not get frightened, I appreciate the work of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, the Department of the Railway and its chief, who entered the mined territory, thus risking his live and managed to restore the movement of the trains several times.

I personally get familiar with the ongoing process - the tempo is really high, but we must work with a higher tempo, we do not have a single minute to loose and you all have to know this.

We have an 18-month plan and we have to return to the pre-war situation in these 18 months. All the infrastructure, every destroyed house must be restored and what is most important Georgian economy must develop with the same tempo, that it had before the war.

One thing is evident, the Russian economy, that has a lot of oil and natural gas, underwent tremendous damage, more that the Georgian economy. The whole world admits it, Russia among them.

We are less concerned with the Russian damage, we wish to raise Georgia up and move forward as before.

We wont allow anyone to bring us back into 92-93. Then the country was in the collapse, the people became poor, everything was destroyed, there was hunger.

They planed to do it with us, they wrote such a scenario and predicted it. When the Russians were getting ready for the war with us, their wish was to bring Georgia back into 93-92. They will never get it.

By our unified efforts, no one will be able to reach their aims.

I tasked Vano Merabishvili to coordinate reconstructive works, to give lodging to homeless people and to create good living conditions. Creating good living conditions does not only mean building of homes, but a packet of financial compensation. If anyone lost a cow, we must give them a cow, some people lost their transportation assets and clothes, we have to compensate their loss. This is the function of government and Vano Merabishvili will head this process.

We also had several proposals from various opposition groups about developing an anti-crisis council.

We are holding consultations with these opposition groups, there will be presented parliamentary and non-parliamentary representatives of opposition. I would welcome if there will be the NGOs represented as well in this council.

We want this council to have important executive delegated functions, authority of signature on the distribution of assistance, so not to make anyone think in the society that this money is not spent in right direction or is even stolen by someone.

So I ask you, that every minister, deputies, representatives of local government to work together with this commission.

The work of this commission must be transparent and public. We have to give the opposition right to know where, how and what we are going to do, please provide their mobility, they should have access everywhere.

Some of them, still have state position and I received a lot of information from them.

We have to work with them, to give them ability to get involved in this process actively.

I think we learned lessons out of this war, it showed us our dignity, it showed us strength of our statehood and its apparatus, it showed us clearly vulnerabilities that still exist and now our main mission is to make a precise conclusion, to strengthen what is strong, and to improve our weaknesses, in short possible time.

I want us to understand, that first Russian attack could not reached its aim - our statehood is maintained, our economy survived, our Army is saved, Russian aim was to destroy exactly these institutions.

Russia would think that they reached victory, if Georgia got destroyed, if Army was destroyed, if Georgians would kneel down and in not 1921 at least 92-93 would be repeated.

Russia thinks that they not only had not gained the victory, but they were not able to conclude their aim, and this is threatening.

This is why they are threatening us, they are talking about new equipment, about incensement of army and new aggressive projects.

We are in the beginning of peaceful fight.

This is not only our fight, this is how aggressive, neo-imperialistic Russia is opposing the whole civilized world.

We are on the side of civilization, peace, reconstruction, on the side of International Law. They are on the side of injustice and they are the main initiators of creating problems.

Sometimes I get impression, that they only raised up flag of black pirates, they went to the sea and state, that they do not recognize anything, and no one could get on their way, or they will do anything under their black flag.

This type of actions does not have any perspective - pirates end their way badly.

Our aim is not to make a small boat crash into this big ship all alone in huge sea.

This is why we must be flexible and united, we have to understand that we will gain a final victory.

We have to maintain everything what we have and we have to build much more strong fundament, on what we have, to get minimal damage after this type of risks.

We did not wanted this war, but we were not able to avoid it. This is why we have to talk about many things seriously and we must discuss all issues.

I welcome the fact that the Parliament, the opposition and various groups of society have various questions around Russian aggression, around this war and that they want additional information about many details. These questions are absolutely fair and all of them should be answered. We should be ready to answer them.

Therefore, I welcome the idea of setting up a group of rapporteurs in the Parliament. I have discussed this issue with various groups and it was their idea, it is not my idea.

I hope that this rapporteurs will work efficiently, in a fast manner, and not a single question will be left unanswered.

I hope that sufficient hearings will be held, debates, transparent parliamentary process - we are democrats, democrats do everything transparently.

We are different from Russia - the single person makes decision there.

Our strength is that we discuss all decisions for a long time, and after that we make reports to our society about every single detail, about every single event, even about our enemy attacks. We do not have any issue, that is hidden from our society, because this concerns existential interests of our society.

We want to submit all materials and evidences - and we have more than enough of these evidences - to this parliamentary process, to the non-governmental organizations.

We have big international support, but this has to be written in our history.

We are a small country and country like us will never reach a result except peaceful way, even with such an aggressive state like Russia.

We have reached main result - Georgia, our state structures, our Armed Forces survived, and what is the most important the Georgian economy has survived and it will continue development process.

Now our aim is to use all legislative mechanisms, in order not to make anyone think that they can legalize our occupied territories, even a single house.

I asked the Parliament to adopt a law, according to which, any illegal transfer of Georgian property will be counted illegal and becomes invalid.

Many ally countries stand beside us, they are ready to share our positions. This countries shape the world economy.

We have to work together with them to posses the exact list of illegal transactions and contracts. Every single meter of our territory is our and the whole international society proved our territorial integrity. This became the main issue of all international discussions and it is not an issue anymore, like it was ten years ago.

Finally Georgia will come out of this situation stronger.

We must work in exceptional manner during several months, to make the reflection of damage minimal.

Tens of state leaders will come in Georgia, the first big summit will be held in Georgia. We must be able to get so much specific assistance out of this summit, which will be spent on wealth, education, employment and health, also on the future of our families and Georgia.

Now the government has to be ten times stronger, before it was till the beginning of war.

You have worked well during the war, but this war was only the first episode of our fight.

The fight against Georgia and whole world is still going on unfortunately, but our revival must have much more fast tempo.

I want to call everyone - do as much as you can.

I want to call everyone for transparency and for coordination with the local government and non-governmental sector.

People should know what is the ministers, governors or heads of administration daily work, so people could live better, and if they are not doing what they have to do, we must account for it.

Everyone must know what did the President, the Prime Minister and the State of Georgia for each of our citizen daily.

The government together with the people must swiftly move forward.



Communications Office
of the President of Georgia




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