Saakashvili Chews on His Necktie "Under Stress"
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was the last witness to address a Georgian parliamentary commission investigating the South Ossetian war. It took him five hours to say who had unleashed the war and why, how he had met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, and why he had been chewing on his necktie. The baffled opposition says the President might have been delirious.
Professor Valery Kvaratskhelia, head of the Georgian-Russian Friendship Centre, described President Saakashvili's testimony as "the ravings of a madman".
"Two points were of interest, however," he told Moskovsky Komsomolets. "First, the President said that the U.S. Secretary of State had revealed Moscow's goal in the August drama to Georgian leaders. This goal was razing Georgia to the ground, believe it or not! Second, Saakashvili alleges that Russia committed not only its 58th Army, but 95% of its Armed Forces. He is sure to this day that Georgia will join NATO-and no less sure that whatever he was doing before and during the war was beyond reproach. He believes the United States will not change its foreign policy positions under the new President."
No one prompted Saakashvili to mention his necktie. He said he could have eaten, not merely bitten, it "with the stress" but, regardless, "the enemy will never see Georgia wave the white flag or back down". As for the "Lilliputin" coinage, the issue was raised by parliamentary inquiry. The commission chairman said the word was notorious in Georgia-to which the President replied that he had never applied it to Mr Putin and had never been rude to him in a public address "though he had quite serious reasons to do so". He said it was calumny circulated by the Russian political elite, who detest him. Be that as it may, several Moskovsky Komsomolets interviewees in Tbilisi insisted they had heard Saakashvili using the word "Lilliputin" in televised addresses.
Though acknowledging that his country initiated the war, the President said it had been forced to deal the first blow, as Russian aggression was impending. "True, we decided to open hostilities to regain control of Tskhinvali. It was a painful decision-one that had to be made to protect our Fatherland," Saakashvili said as he alleged that a Russian column of several hundred tanks had been invading Georgia.
If that were so, his conduct as Commander-in-Chief was inexplicable. When he heard about enemy tanks crossing his country's border, he ordered the Army not to ward off the intruder in its approaches on the country-the Rok Tunnel on the Zar Road-but to make a night onslaught on a peaceful city where there were no Russian troops. It is no less baffling why the President and his generals did not make emergency addresses to the nation being attacked in an undeclared war. Georgian brass hats did not say a word about Russian aggression that night, but spoke at length about "re-instituting the constitutional order". More than that, Saakashvili said Tskhinvali was not a peaceful sleeping city but a "military camp wherefrom civilians had been intently evacuated in good time". As it appears, the President really believes that defenceless seniors, women, and children crouching in cellars during Georgian air and artillery raids were invented by dozens of journalists working in war-torn Tskhinvali-or were disguised Russian rangers.
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P.S. Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Nicaragua two months after Nicaragua recognised Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence. It is hard to say why it took Georgian diplomats so long to ponder the demarche.
Maria Martova