President Mikheil Saakashvili held a special briefing on 5 April to thank members of parliament for reaching consensus to support a draft law on creating a temporary administrative unit for South Ossetia. Parliament voted 165-2 in favour of the bill.

[Saakashvili] This decision by the Georgian parliament is of principal importance. We are seeking - though compromise, flexible negotiations and due consideration to the interests of all sides - to achieve on the one hand the establishment of autonomy rights for the Ossetian population of Georgia and codify these rights institutionally through negotiations and on the other hand the protection of Georgia's territorial integrity from outside interference, the total elimination of this interference, and the restoration of Georgia's territorial integrity.

It is very significant that all the major political forces in the Georgian parliament without exception supported this initiative. This is the main change that has taken place in Georgia over the past few years. Let us all recall that it was in the early 1990s that Georgia's ill-wishers managed to cast doubt on Georgia's territorial integrity and made us loose control over the most important parts of our territory. This was because at that time the Georgian political spectrum, the national political spectrum - of course I am not referring here to ethnicity - the main political forces were preoccupied primarily with internal rivalries, settling personal scores with each other and protecting their own personal ambitions while ignoring the interests of the country.

The first precedent was when the Georgian parliament unanimously voted to support Georgia's integration with NATO. That was the first declaration where all major political forces without exception stood together to send a message to the whole world. And today, for the second time, as a result of this dialogue, all major political forces without exception have supported the process of making compromise and achieving peace in the conflict zone on the territory of the former Autonomous Region of South Ossetia, the Tskhinvali region.

This means that we are extending a hand to that part of Georgia's Ossetian population-[changes tack] these people represent practically all ethnic Ossetians in Georgia; it is impossible for a normal person not to want peace and normal development for their children and themselves. We are giving these people a chance to achieve a real peace through dialogue, mutual compromise and major development projects - we intend to invest tens and hundreds of millions in the rehabilitation of the conflict zone.

This is of much greater importance than any ambition or any intrigue that may be linked to this. This is precisely what most irritates those people who want to blackmail Georgia and use it as a bargaining chip in some kind of global game.

We will follow this path to the end. We know that there will be many obstacles along this path, we know that there will be provocation, that there will be attempts to incite confrontation, that there will be attempts to put pressure on the political spectrum, that some might attempt to advance their own personal ambitions, but we will see this through to the end. The Georgian parliament today clearly demonstrated that Georgia would not fit into the schemes written and imposed upon us by others and that our political spectrum is first and foremost our political spectrum - our country's political spectrum and not some group of politicians who dance to music written by someone else.

We have managed to demonstrate that we are ready to steadfastly protect the rights of all ethnic minorities, all ethnic groups and all citizens and to see through to the end the principle of Georgia's territorial integrity and give these people sufficient guarantees for their development within our united state, our united Georgia.

I believe that this process must continue. This law will be finally adopted next week. We intend to hold intensive dialogue in the area with representatives of absolutely every political group and representatives of international organizations. We plan to reinforce security measures in order to rule out the threat of provocation as much as possible. We plan to see this endeavour, which is correct and is in the interests of all Georgians and all Georgian citizens without exception, through to the end.

I again want to again express my deep thanks to parliament. I want to pay special thanks to Nika Gvaramia, who left parliament today because he has a new job at the Georgian Prosecutor-General's Office, but who did a good job presenting the bill. Nika is from Sukhumi. He worked together with us on this law, which will certainly bring peace to the Tskhinvali region and which will serve as the basis for the resolution of our other main issue, Abkhazia.

Thank you very much.

Translated by BBC Monitoring

press Office
of the President of Georgia