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Mikheil Saakashvili has announced he is determined to see what he calls the "biggest airport in the Caucasus" built on the very edge of a globally important forest wetland near Poti reports Tbilisi Times.

The airport plan has been condemned as a "catastrophe" and a "global environmental crime" because of the damage it is feared it will do to the environment in the Kolkheti National Park but the president seems determined that it should go ahead: justifying it as a way of lowering ticket prices for tourists flying into Georgia.

"The Poti Airport will make the Tbilisi Airport, which is in a monopolistic state, lower ticket prices," the website quotes the president as saying. 

There are other political forces at play too: the president is to order the Poti local authority, the current owners of the regional airport, to hand the site over to the Ras al-Khaimah Investment Authority.

Ras al-Khaimah, an absolute monarchy and one of the smaller components in the gulf state of the United Arab Emirates, is now a major investor in Georgia and, through its control of the Imedi TV station, an important and unaccountable, either in Georgia or at home, political force in the country.

Since the emirate took over the TV station they have appointed the president's former chief aide, Giorgi Arveladze, as its director general and while once it was the major outlet for dissident voices in Georgia it now rivals the public channel and its nominal private sector competitor Rustavi 2 in its enthusiasm for pro-government propaganda.

It also receives what ministers euphemistically refer to as "state aid" to ensure it can stay on air.