Today, at the State Chancellery the Minister of Refugees and Accommodation, Giorgi Kheviashvili, held a presentation of a presidential project called "My House", which is using satellite imagery to create maps to determine the property rights of those who fled Abkhazia during the 1992-93 war. Within the framework of this project satellite imagery of Gudauta is already obtained which allows us to get detailed information on every house, road, or land. According to the project creators the obtained data will enables to define exact material damage done to Georgia. President Saakashvili said that this project will hinder Abkhaz separatist government from selling real property in Abkhazia. 
In order to create a data base for the IDP from Abkhazia, President Saakashvili will allocate several million lari from the presidential fund. According to President Saakashvili, property ownership should be legitimized to the people of all ethnicity who fled Abkhazia during the armed conflict in Abkhazia in 1992-93, stressing that this will enable the Georgian government to protect the rights of its own citizens at every international level and at the same time will not allow anybody to appropriate property in Abkhazia. 

"This program began on my initiative, as soon as I learnt that the so-called government [of Abkhazia] was to adopt a so-called law so that it could sell your property - I mean not just the property of ethnic Georgians, but also Estonians, Ukrainians, ethnic Russians, Greeks, Jews and so on - to some strangers from other countries who wanted to buy it. We are already a state that now has enough time to deal with this, I mean we are not just free to do it, it is our most important task. We have the technical means, the money and the necessary legal basis to say that all property here will be untouchable and if anyone acquires it illegally it is robbery, banditry or theft and that is a crime under our law and international law.

When people say that Abkhazia is like Kosovo, they are forgetting a simple thing. Unlike Kosovo, the majority of people living there were expelled through ethnic cleansing and their property remains there. 

I would like to tell people of all nationalities, who had a legitimate right to live there, to claim our rights together. I will allocate several million lari for this. It takes time. By having the certificates of ownership we will be able to prove any foreign company that it illegally holds property. Never and nowhere in the world has anybody legitimized banditry. We want peaceful settlement, which means that the property and the people's rights are untouchable. This is the Georgian territory, where the human rights must be protected. That is our clearly defined policy. We want peaceful development within a democratic framework. However, democracy means the supremacy of law and the protection of the people, President Saakashvili said.

Part of this translation is published with permission from BBC Monitoring, Reading UK

Communications Office
of the President of Georgia