President Saakashvili delivers speech at the Council of Europe Summit

5/18/2005

President Mikheil Saakashvili delivered a speech at the Council of Europe Summit today in which he underlined the issues of fight against terrorism, corruption and international crime and stressed that international community has to unite in order to solve these problems with joint efforts. "Arms and human trafficking are the major problems in the post-Soviet space," President Saakashvili said.

President Saakashvili talked about spreading and developing democracy in the post soviet space stressing that Georgia is committed to make it happen. Mikheil Saakashvili also discussed withdrawal of Russian bases from the Georgian territory and the recently deteriorated relationship between Georgia and Russia. "Georgia strives for the Euro Atlantic integration, but at the same time it has very tight relationship with the US and tries to retain benign relationship with Russia. Georgia will resolve the problem of the breakaway regions -Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which remain to be the black holes in Europe," the President said.

President Saakashvili put an emphasis on the ongoing events in Belarus stressing that the Belarus people are in the captivity of Alexander Lukashenko's regime that isolates its people and deprives them of the opportunity to be the member of the European family.

President Saakashvili called on the international organizations to assist the Belarus people build an open and democratic state.



Communications Office
of the President of Georgia