Thorbjørn Jagland:

First of all, ladies and gentleman, I would like to say that we are indeed pleased to see President Saakashvili here again in the Council of Europe. We have had a very good cooperation with his administration and the former government and clearly we will continue to work with the new government. We are watching carefully what is going on, their intentions to do a lot of reforms, also in the constitution, which we of course will offer our expertise in such processes. I think now it is very, very important to see the transformation to the new government to take place peacefully and it is therefore equally important that any changes and any reforms will be done in cooperation with all political forces and all political tendencies and of course with the society in the country, so that we all can move forward on the united platform. I would say this is extremely important when it comes to the constitution because the constitution should be a platform for all political forces to compete on equal footing and that’s why it’s so important that everybody has ownership to the constitution. And of course, all the other laws are important to see that there are inclusive political processes, so I said to the president that we will continue our assistance also in the new political situation in Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili:

Yes, Mr. Secretary General, we are very grateful for your personal understanding of the situation. There are lots of drafts coming on to parliament on constitutional law or so called political  prisoners in Georgia, and we need to have a normal European process… not subjective or whatever  political expediency of any political group… we need what is acceptable by European norms. We are part of Europe, we want to be part of the European Union, we want to be part of the Euro Atlantic institution, but it also means values and we all understand that, this organization is the primary safeguard of values, from the very first moment when I came here, first in the mid 90’s as a young parliamentarian, up to the very moment I’m coming here now as a president. We are always very careful to follow your advice and to take it into consideration because it’s for Georgia; we want to be part of Europe because it is good for Georgian people not because Europe wants to impose anything upon us. We want to follow your advice because it ultimately contributes to a better democracy and framework. From that point of view we are very grateful that you continue to give this advice especially in this crucial moment, lots of dramatic and radical changes we should not deviate from the European path, deviate from European standards and that's very important for the future for my own people and also for our region I guess. I'm very grateful for this conversation exchange. I'm coming back to address the assembly in January.