Georgia, 2010

It is always a great

honour for me to address the annual gathering of the

General Assembly.

In uncertain times such as ours, cooperation is

more necessary than ever. Unless we stand together

and invent new approaches to the global challenges we

all face, we shall be torn apart by fear and self-

destructive interests. Gatherings such as this, therefore,

are valuable only if they allow us to shape a common

vision for concrete action towards peace, development,

solidarity and justice.

This month, thanks to the coordinated efforts of

the international community and the leadership of

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, direct

peace talks have resumed between Israelis and

Palestinians. This is a very important moment, because

they resume precisely when many people had given up

hope for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

The road to peace, security, and justice is still a

long one. The remaining obstacles are enormous. But

the goal is so noble and necessary that no effort should

be spared. That is why today I would like to pay tribute

to all those who are taking risks for peace. Yes, risks.

Because peace is never obvious, never easy. That is

certainly true in the Middle East, and it is true in my

region as well.

One of our common goals, then, must be to

enable those risk-takers who have the courage to defy

conventional wisdom and forge new paths to peace.

Peace is not an easy way. But peace is the only way.

As the President of a young democracy that

recently suffered from war and invasion and is still

under partial occupation of an important part of its

territory by a nuclear super-Power, I can say this: peace

is our most precious common goal and, at the same

time, our only path towards the other goals we share.

To those here and in my own country who see no

way to reverse the armed occupation or reduce regional

tensions, I say: peace is not only the goal, it is also the

means to any goal.

Today my region is at a crossroads. For too long,

it has suffered from division, injustice, conflict,

colonization and violence. Today, however, change is

possible. In fact, change is already taking place. I came

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here to speak about this change and to promote a

specific vision — a vision of a free, stable and united

Caucasus.

From the times of Pushkin, Lermontov or Tolstoy

to the present day, the Caucasian mountains have been

a symbol of wilderness and paradoxes, a region where

individuals and souls were fundamentally free, but

where citizens were brutally oppressed; where people

and cultures were deeply tolerant, but where

Governments and authorities created artificial

divisions; where shepherds would cross 5,000-metres-

high mountains, but where rulers erected walls nobody

could cross. I have come here today to tell the

Assembly that those times are vanishing, that the

dream of unity and peace is possible.

When I addressed the Assembly two years ago —

in the aftermath of a full-scale invasion, and when the

Russian Foreign Minister was openly discussing with

foreign diplomats and the international community the

possibility of Georgia’s total annihilation — few

people believed that our country would survive as an

independent and democratic State. Few people thought

that our Government would endure, that our economy

would survive the war and the global crisis, that our

reforms could continue with renewed vigour, or that we

would make steady progress towards the European

Union and Euro-Atlantic structures.

Well, I am proud to tell the Assembly, two years

later, that we have succeeded against all the odds,

thanks to the commitment of the Georgian people and

to the support of friends and allies. Today, Georgia is

back.

Georgia is back, first, as a laboratory for political

reform and social transformation.

More than ever, we are committed to the promise

at the heart of the Rose Revolution to turn a failed

State into a modern European one. Our local elections

last May were proof of that transformation and a

milestone for our democracy, the result of seven years

of patient, constant, tireless reform.

Our objective is clear: to create a more

institutionalized system of liberal democratic

governance.

My term as President ends in 2013. These

changes will survive my presidency and the current

Government, because we are not speaking only about

changes of leadership or reforms of institutions; we are

speaking about something deeper and stronger —

something that The Economist of London recently

branded as Georgia’s “mental revolution”.

The Georgian people have tasted freedom, the

absence of corruption, the fruits of economic

development, the emergence of a true meritocracy.

They have changed their behaviour, their vision of the

world, their dreams even, and they will mightily resist

any attempts to reverse those changes — no matter

whether those attempts come from inside or from

abroad.

This is our great victory: we helped to create

something that goes far beyond the leaders and parties

that led the Rose Revolution. We helped to create a

revolution of the heart and the mind.

Once one of the most corrupt countries of the

post-Soviet world, Georgia has made greater gains in

the fight against corruption, as witnessed by

Transparency International, than any other country

over the past five years. Once a place where foreign

investors were kidnapped by gangs and mafias,

Georgia is now ranked by the World Bank as number

11 for ease of doing business in the world — a ranking

we hope to further improve this year — and the

number 1 in Eastern and Central Europe. These

rankings make clear why Georgia’s only interest is a

peaceful resolution of conflicts: Georgia is winning the

peace — Georgia is winning through peace.

Our northern neighbour expected us to change

our path when it imposed on us a full embargo in 2006,

invaded us in 2008, ethnically cleansed Georgian

regions and illegally occupied 20 per cent of our

territory, an occupation that continues to this day. All

these actions had one objective: to destroy the

Georgian laboratory of political, economic and social

reform — to prevent the region from changing.

We answered those relentless attacks by

reinvigorating our reforms, opening our economy even

more, and accelerating our social transformation. This

is our policy, and no provocation will ever make us

change it. Thanks to this commitment to reform,

Georgia is now a responsible international player.

I am proud that my nation is fighting

international terrorism in Afghanistan. I pay tribute

here to our nearly 1,000 soldiers who are risking their

lives every day in the south of Afghanistan to help the

Afghan people secure a stable, terror-free future. I pay

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a special tribute today to company commander First

Lieutenant Mukhran Shukvani, who died earlier this

month. Mukhran was killed in the cause of peace,

while serving alongside NATO forces in the dangerous

Helmand province of Afghanistan.

We are fighting other common scourges, now

focusing especially on the terrible danger of nuclear

trafficking. Many times over the past seven years we

have intercepted criminals who had in their possession

the essential ingredients for nuclear devices. Every step

of the way, we have cooperated with our allies in the

international community to ensure that Georgia is

doing everything possible to confront this global

danger.

Here I must pause to draw attention to a grave

problem that resulted from the partial occupation of my

country — a problem that everybody should worry

about, even those who overlook and do not care too

much about violations of international law, who forget

500,000 internally displaced persons and refugees;

even those who dismiss repeated assaults on basic

human rights, civil liberties and the environment.

I am speaking of the lawlessness bred by the

Russian occupation. Our two occupied regions exist in

a black hole of governance. Today, in those lands,

criminals act with impunity. The most elemental human

rights are abused. Drugs and weapons are smuggled.

People are trafficked. And potential weapons of mass

destruction are moved in and out of the territories,

posing a threat to us all.

Three days ago, we met in this very place to

discuss the Millennium Development Goals and our

progress in meeting them over the past decade. I shall

not tire the Assembly with a recitation of our efforts to

achieve the Goals, the strides we have made in halving

our poverty rate and decreasing by two thirds our

extreme poverty, reforming our educational system and

improving health care.

But I will tell the Assembly that all those

successes remain bittersweet for me, because they

cannot be savoured by all the people of Georgia — not

by those who live in fear for their basic rights in the

occupied territories, nor fully by the 500,000 internally

displaced persons and refugees who were expelled

from their homes and cannot go back and regain their

property.

For the last two years the Russian Federation has

been violating the ceasefire agreement brokered in

August 2008 by my good friend French President

Nicolas Sarkozy, who was acting at the time on behalf

of the European Union. The Russian army has not

withdrawn as required by the ceasefire. European

Union monitors cannot enter Russian-occupied areas of

Georgia, where a constant military build-up is taking

place. Hundreds of thousands of internally displaced

persons, victims of the ethnic cleansing campaign led

by the Russian forces, are still prevented from entering

their homes.

How did Georgia respond to those violations of

international law and human rights? We answered with

patience and calm. We implemented — fully — the

ceasefire agreement and went beyond our obligations,

without ever using as a pretext Russia’s refusal to

comply. Last month, the head of the European Union

Monitoring Mission in Georgia, Ambassador Haber,

publicly praised Georgian policy as “constructive

unilateralism”.

What does constructive unilateralism mean? It

refers, for instance, to our calm when militias

supported by Russia’s federal security service (FSB)

killed our policemen at the occupation line, or to our

willingness to free criminals working for the

occupation regime when the other side was kidnapping

teenagers who wanted to visit their empty house just

after their school time.

Constructive unilateralism means that we behave

in a civilized and patient way, even when our enemy

uses barbaric methods or implements an impulsive and

irrational policy. It means that — even if peace

requires both sides to come to the negotiating table —

one can pave the way to peace on one’s own, without

the other side’s cooperating.

This constructive unilateralism is based on the

idea that peace is in the supreme interest of Georgia,

that peace is the only path to the de-occupation of our

country. It forms the substance of the strategy on

occupied territories that my Government has put in

motion to engage the populations held hostage by the

Russian occupiers, on the other side of the new Iron

Curtain that illegally divides our country.

Like the Berlin Wall, walls like the one dividing

Georgia will be brought down not by bombs, but by the

commitment of citizens to build a free, united

country — and by the commitment of the world

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community to enforce international law and the

principles of the Charter.

This commitment is expressed in the refusal of

nearly the entire world to legitimize the Russian

occupation and the result of ethnic cleansing by

recognizing the so-called independence of Abkhazia

and the Tskhinvali region, a de facto annexation of

Georgian territories by the Russian Federation.

It is noticeable that, despite enormous pressure

and multiple threats from Moscow, not a single former

Soviet republic has recognized this dismemberment of

Georgia. It shows — to the great surprise of those who

describe the fall of the Soviet empire as the worst

catastrophe of the twentieth century — that the old

times are definitely over. It shows that the change I

evoked earlier has already taken root. It shows that all

the former captive nations of Soviet times are now

independent States that can determine their own

policies. It is noticeable — and it is noticed in

Moscow.

I solemnly call today on those three, isolated

Member States that recognized Russia’s de facto

annexation of our territories and legitimized the

Russian-led ethnic cleansing of around 500,000

citizens, to acknowledge that it is never too late to

reverse a bad policy. The dismemberment of Georgia

has failed categorically — and even the Russian

Federation will one day need to reverse its disastrous

policy. Imagine how uncomfortable those leaders from

faraway countries will be when Moscow itself chooses

to comply with international law and withdraw its

troops. Because that day will come.

Those who claimed a military victory in 2008

now face a diplomatic and political defeat. And in

Moscow the occupation and annexation will soon be

debated. They are in fact already debated in the

corridors of the Kremlin, because this situation is not

sustainable, even for the Russian leadership.

We have now in our country Russian soldiers

deserting their units and fleeing to the Georgian side

through the wall erected by their superiors, just as

Soviet soldiers did in Berlin during the cold war. In

which direction is history moving? Certainly not in the

direction of those who can deploy thousands of tanks

in a very short time, but who cannot even take care of

their soldiers or prevent them from fleeing.

Those who refuse to modernize their society and

to open their political system may have an interest in

war and instability. But in Georgia we know, and we

have always known, that peace is our interest — the

very precondition of our survival and our success.

I have three calls to make today.

My first call is addressed to my fellow citizens,

ethnic Abkhaz and Ossetian, who live behind the new

Iron Curtain that divides our common nation. I want to

tell them once again: We will protect your rights, your

culture, your history — we will work with you, we will

work for you. You are part of a common history, a

common culture and a common future. Your

differences enrich our proud national tapestry. Rather

than see you succumb to annexation by the emerging

Russian empire, we invite you to build together with us

a multicultural and multi-ethnic society that will be a

regional model for tolerance and respect.

I dream about the day when — as has happened

several times in our common history — an Abkhaz or

Ossetian citizen of Georgia becomes President and

leader of a democratic and European Georgia. And this

dream will become possible in a reunited and free

Georgia, a Georgia that will build positive relations

and even intense cooperation with the Russian

Federation, a Russian Federation acting as a rational

international player and not as a revisionist or

revanchist Power; a Russian Federation that will have

chosen cooperation instead of confrontation and has

dropped the politics of embargoes and intolerance, and

instead of imposing crackdowns will be a good partner

to cooperate with.

My second call is, therefore, to the Russian

leadership, to whom I say: You face a choice. Either

you take a major part in the ongoing transformation of

our common region, accepting that other countries are

your partners and not vassals, or this transformation

will happen without you. We all want — I personally

want — Russia as a great partner and not as an enemy.

That is why the Georgian Government supports the

reset policy of the United States and the European

Union’s engagement with Russia. Nobody has a greater

stake than we have in seeing Russia turn into a country

that truly operates within the concert of nations,

respects international law and — this is often

connected — upholds basic human rights.

I want to tell the Russian people that they will

always be welcome in Georgia, as tourists, as students,

5 10-54833

as businessmen, as journalists or simply as friends, but

never as occupation forces. And I want to tell the

Russian leaders that they should care more about their

citizens and less about our diplomatic orientation, more

about developing the Northern Caucasus — a region

that is exploding as I speak — than about undermining

our development. They are welcome to come too if

they want, in order to understand how a post-Soviet

society can turn into a European one. We invite them

to come, with notebooks rather than with missiles, with

iPads rather than Kalashnikovs.

I was pleased to note that some of our reforms

inspired a few recent presidential speeches in Moscow.

Instead of fighting each other, we should excel together

in modernizing our common region. And instead of

secretly copying or envying our reforms, they should

cooperate with us in building a stable and free region,

building stable and free countries. Because by looking

over the best pupil’s shoulder one might not get the full

picture of what modernization means. The complete

picture is rather simple: lasting stability and prosperity

cannot be achieved without respecting some basic

principles.

Modernization without freedom is not sustainable.

One cannot hope to diversify and develop one’s

economy when one sends one’s most talented and

successful businessmen to the Gulag, as happened to

Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Computers are not enough

without free minds to use them. So let us free our

minds from our common Soviet past in order to build a

common future.

My third and final call is to every member of the

international community: help us to secure peace — in

Georgia, but also in our broader region. We Georgians

have learned tragically how a so-called frozen conflict

can very quickly become a hot one.

If there is clear support from the international

community, I am convinced that a lasting peace can be

secured in the Caucasus. I am convinced that if the

world shows the same commitment to a peaceful

resolution of conflicts in my region as in other parts of

the world we can accomplish wonders. It is in

everybody’s interest to see this strategic region, this

crossroads of civilizations, become more stable,

prosperous and open.

History has taught us that wars can erupt

quickly — but also that brave leaders can secure peace

where nobody would ever believe that conflicts could

be resolved. History has taught us that regions that

were torn apart by armed conflicts and contaminated

by hate — starting with Europe — can achieve lasting

peace through cooperation, interdependence and unity.

History has taught us that dreams are often more

realistic than resignation.

I strongly believe that a common market, shared

interests and political and economic interdependence

will one day give birth to a united Caucasus. That is

what I call for today.

We share a similar history of oppression, but we

have also in common a deep, essential and undefeated

aspiration for freedom. Let us capitalize on this

aspiration. Our region will never be truly free if it is

not united.

It will of course require a long and difficult series

of efforts and gestures, from all of us, but the objective

is worth every sacrifice. As happened a long time ago

with the European Union — that amazing geopolitical

revolution we aspire to join one day — the historic

move towards Caucasian unity will start with concrete

projects, in the energy sector, in the education and the

cultural fields and in the civil society sphere.

We should begin with more people-to-people

exchanges. It is time we got to know each other and

forged links that will bring us together without

changing existing inter-State borders.

My birth town and our capital, Tbilisi, is

inhabited by Caucasians of every religion and every

ethnicity. Together they form a living example of

tolerance and cooperation. So it is possible. We leaders

have to learn from this cohabitation of peoples and

translate it into geopolitics.

Our unity would not be directed against anyone.

Once again, we will not aspire to change any borders.

That needs to be emphasized.

We may belong to different States and ethnic

groups, and live on different sides of the mountains,

but in terms of human and cultural space there is no

North and South Caucasus; there is only one Caucasus,

which belongs to world civilization and Europe and

will one day join the big European family of free

nations, following the Georgian path.

We, the Caucasians, driven by legitimate or

imaginary threats of assimilation or attacks from other

Powers, or from each other, hoped too often to be

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protected by neighbouring empires. This anxious

search for foreign shelter led us to subjugation,

assimilation, annexation and historical tragedy. It

authorized foreign leaders to artificially emphasize and

manipulate our divisions.

We — Caucasian people — all made the same

mistake through history. It is time to change. It is time

to stick together, to help each other to survive and

progress. It is time to understand that our region has

sufficient resources and potential for all of us. It is time

to rely on ourselves, on the human potential of our

citizens, on development of our own education system,

and time to organize our own development.

The Caucasus is one of the birthplaces of world

civilization. It is time to show that the energy of our

ancestors does not belong only to an iconic past, and

that we have something to give to our children and to

the world. It is time to stop fighting and weakening

each other and to realize that our strength consists in

unity. It is time for unity and peace. It is time to stop

being prisoners of the past and to move towards our

common future.

In the past, Georgian citizens perceived our

border with the Ottoman Empire as an absolute threat.

Today, we have passport-free customs; we can enter

each other’s country without passports and visas. We

have a joint airport and free trade with Turkey, and

very friendly relations. Tomorrow, the citizens of

Armenia and Azerbaijan will be able to cross our

borders without passports. Even today there is a very

simplified procedure; they do not even have to leave

their cars.

Recently, a foreign diplomat told me that after

crossing our only legal crossing point with Russia he

encountered dozens of roadblocks where dangerous-

looking, unshaven local militiamen and FSB agents

kept blocking the passage from one valley to another,

from one village to another, aggressively preventing

individuals from circulating in their own country.

There is also talk about the eventuality of, and

preparation for, a new war with Georgia.

It is time to replace those people, barbed wire and

roadblocks by open borders and passport-free customs,

to replace camps for internally displaced persons by

joint schools and universities, to replace the

Kalashnikov by computers, and to replace missiles by

books or television sets.

In 2008, thousands and thousands of tanks,

armoured vehicles, artillery platforms, troops and

militias crossed the Caucasian mountains, bringing

destruction, death and hatred. Now it is time for

ideas — the ideas of freedom and unity that we all

cherish — to cross the same mountains, bringing hope,

life and even love.

As I speak, thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles

and missile platforms are entrenched or moving all

across the Caucasus. If we remain on our own, isolated

from each other, they surely will prevail. But if

everybody holds his neighbour’s hand, if tens of

millions of unarmed people peacefully stand together,

shoulder to shoulder, being the continuation of each

other, just like the Caucasian mountains, then no brutal

force will ever break through this chain of awakened

human spirits and this irresistible thirst for freedom.