By Sharon Behn
Original Version
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Republic of Georgia plans to be a close ally of the United
States and its giant neighbor Russia will have to live with that fact,
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said in an interview yesterday.
The newly elected president, who engineered the ouster of former
President Eduard Shevardnadze last fall, was in a buoyant mood after
what aides described as a "very warm" meeting with President Bush
yesterday in the Oval Office.
"The relationship is based on shared values," said the hulking
U.S.-trained lawyer, who emphasized the "kinship" and "chemistry"
between Georgia and the United States during a meeting at Blair House
with editors and reporters from The Washington Times.
Mr. Saakashvili said he had recently met for 4 hours with
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he found "nostalgic" over the
demise of the former Soviet Union but desirous of better relations
with his neighbors.
"They are getting used to our cooperation with the Americans and
learning to live with it," Mr. Saakashvili said.
Almost every member of the new Georgian government has been
trained in the United States, making the new leadership a natural ally
of the West and the United States. Defense Minister Gela Bezhuashvili,
for example, is a graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas
and of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"Basically we speak the same language," Mr. Saakashvili said.
Georgia, a country of 5 million people wedged among Chechnya,
Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Black Sea and the oil-rich Caspian
Sea, has become one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid and is
actively cooperating with Washington in the war against terrorism.
Mr. Saakashvili said his country was sending 500 troops to
supplement the 200 soldiers it already has in Tikrit, Iraq, and noted
that the United States is training two Georgian military brigades and
a counterterrorism force that could be deployed at home or abroad.
The United States is also working with other countries to build a
pipeline that will carry the vast Caspian Sea oil reserves through
Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea.
"We have very good security cooperation," Mr. Saakashvili said,
lounging comfortably before a meeting with Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell. "Even my personal bodyguards are trained by Americans."
Mr. Saakashvili took office with an overwhelming election victory
following his leading role in the "Rose Revolution" that forced the
resignation of the corruption-tainted former Communist Party boss
Eduard Shevardnadze in November.
Georgian authorities have since arrested several officials from
Mr. Shevardnadze's government on corruption charges, including his
son-in-law as he was boarding a plane headed for Paris last week.
But Mr. Saakashvili said he will ask parliament to grant an
amnesty to the former Georgian leader if enough evidence emerges that
the government would otherwise feel obliged to charge him.
"We're not going to prosecute that old man," he said.
Washington's favorable view of the new Georgian government was
reflected in yesterday's State Department report on human rights,
which noted that the Jan. 4 presidential election had been more fair
than past ballots and that major protests had been permitted.
However, the State Department said, there were scattered reports
of the use of torture, such as electric shock, to extract money or
confessions, and human rights advocates continue to worry about a
culture of impunity.
Mr. Saakashvili has also come under fire from his domestic
opponents. Irakly Areshidze, a political analyst and consultant to
Georgia's New Rights Party, said in an weekend editorial that innocent
people were getting caught in the anticorruption net and being held
for political reasons.
Journalists from a major television station in Tbilisi,
meanwhile, have protested at what they said was the death of the free
press under the new government.
Mr. Saakashvili shrugged off the criticism yesterday and insisted
the power of the press was intact. "Of course people don't like that
we crack down on corruption," he said.
He also rejected charges that he has tried to centralize
authority, saying he enjoys powers somewhere between those of the
presidents of Germany and France. "I cannot dissolve Parliament at my
own will. ... I don't control the legislature," he said.
While he insisted that Russia would have to leave its two
military bases in Georgia, Mr. Saakashvili said the two nations would
continue cooperating on joint border patrols and intelligence sharing.
He said Georgia also regularly exchanges information with the
United States and that the FBI is active in his country, as are 70
U.S. military instructors and another 25 advisers at the Ministry of
Defense.
"It takes three friends to make it really peaceful," he said
smiling. "I think the Russians understand that."
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