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Irakli Alasania in the London Guardian: time to look forward from last August's war

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Irakli Alasania, leader of Our Georgia, Free Democrats, writes in the Guardian:

Irakli Alasania at the UK Parliament, credit: georgiamediacentre.com

As a member of the pro-European opposition in Georgia, I support the sentiments expressed by Vaclav Havel and others. Whatever our views of President Saakashvili, we want to see our country reunited and an end to the illegal Russian occupation. There is no doubt the 2008 conflict was planned in Moscow and I hope the EU's report will condemn the almost daily Russian provocations in our territory, as well as showing how our government fell into the most obvious trap.

We need to look forward, though. Both sides must respect the terms of the ceasefire. Through trade and incentives, we need to offer the Abkhazians and Ossetians an alternative to Russia. The international community must do far more to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Georgians. But our security in the face of the Russian threat must not come at the expense of a vibrant, healthy democracy or political reconciliation. I have personal experience of negotiating with the Abkhaz and remain optimistic that we can achieve our dream of peaceful coexistence, not just between Abkahzians, Ossetians and Georgians, but also between political opponents in Tbilisi. We will need European support for both.

Irakli Alasania

Leader, Our Georgia Free Democrats

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[...] is precisely the strategy that has been advocated by leading members of the opposition in Georgia for some time. Relevant content:  Other content on the site that is relevant [...]

 

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