Mikheil Saakashvili has predicted ten million tourists will visit Georgia by 2015 - almost a ten-fold increase - or a 58% annual growth: a figure no major tourist destination has ever been able to sustain over such a period.

The bizarre prediction ranks alongside the Georgian president's June 2010 claim that the country would be as rich as Dubai in "five, six or seven years": meaning a minimum of 39% annual economic growth.

Currently around one million people visit Georgia from abroad ever year - but not all of these are tourists.

It is possible to see large increases in tourism numbers: between 1990 and 2007 Turkey emerged as one of the world's leading tourism destinations, with visitor numbers rising from around 5 million to 22 million in that period: but that is just 9% annual growth.

The world's boom tourist destination in this period was China, with visitors rising from around 10 million to 55 million: 11% per annum growth. Georgia's tourism volumes would have to grow over three times better than that to come close to Saakashvili's target - and all this in a time where economic relations with the traditional tourism source for the Caucasus state, Russia, are in the deep freeze.

The decision of the de facto government of Abkhazia to refuse to co-operate with the Russian authorties, who provide finance and security for the Georgian region, on restitution of Russian citizens' property - for fear it might encourage displaced Georgians to return to their homes in the province - shows that no real progress has been made on solving the Abkhaz crisis.

This weekend it became clear that, even at the price of upsetting the sponsors of their regime, the Abkhaz authorities were not prepared to discuss property restitution and were happy to leave Russians who lost their homes in Abkhazia in much the same situation as the despised Georgians - who actually made up a majority of the population before the civil wars of the early 1990s but were then forced to flee or simply murdered.

Under Communist rule the Abkhaz, ethnically closer to the peoples of the Northern Caucasus than the Georgians (Kartuli) and Mingrelians, were given privileged access to jobs and education as it was judged the best way to maintain peace in the province.

With the fall of Communism and the election of a hardline nationalist president in the form of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Abkhazia increasingly was uneasy with the Georgian government but did not declare its independence until after Georgian militia invaded the territory in pursuit of Gamsakhurdia in the civil war that followed his outser: showing brutality to non-Georgian peoples, particularly the Abkhaz and the Armenians. By the summer of 1993 the Georgians had suffered a catastrophic defeat and civilians had fled or been murdered in large numbers.

Since then Abkhazia has been a running sore on the Georgian polity.

Mikheil Saakashvili first looked for a military solution, massively building up his armed forces after he came to power in 2004. Those same forces were, however, shattered by Russian military might in August 2008.

Since then the Georgian state has declared its commitment to peaceful means and persuasion, but the explicit endorsement of ethnic cleansing - a crime in international law - by the Abkhaz authorities these last few days has shown no progress has been made.

Georgia's economics minister Vera Kobalia appears to be seeking to brazen her way out of trouble caused by her official biography by saying the Vancouver Sun is controlled by a Russian black propaganda unit that is publishing "rumours" designed to throw her off her mission of making Georgia the new Singapore.

The evidence for this appears to be that the Sun had the timerity actually ask Global TV - where Kobalia claims to have worked as a producer between 2004 and 2006 - if they had ever heard of her. Presumably also a part of the Kremlin black propaganda unit, Global TV answered that they had not.

She maintains she did work for the British Columbia based Global.

A civil rights activist in South Ossetia has been physically attacked, allegedly by supporters of the de facto president of the breakaway region, after he signed a joint appeal to negotiators in Geneva to prioritise the needs of the local population.

Timur Tskhovrebov, editor of the newspaper "21st century" was attacked by a group of 10 people, including three members of the self-declared republic's parliament, on 24 July.

Earlier he and other signatories of the appeal, made with civil rights activists from Georgian-controlled territory as well as from Russian-occupied South Ossetia, were denounced as traitors.

Talks in Geneva, part of a regular round established by the ceasefire agreement of August 2008, are underway today.

Not so long ago Mikheil Saakashvili told Georgian men that they would have to "forget about their Natashas".

It was a doubled edged remark - Natasha is the most common woman's name in Russia and at a simple level the Georgian president was simply telling Georgians they would have to get used to the severing of Georgia's links to the Russian Federation.

At another level, though, it was a typical insult from Saakashvili at the Russian people - Natasha is also slang for prostitute - and the president, who recent borrowed from the discourse of nineteenth century racism to label the Russians as his "Mongolid" enemy, was essentially saying Russian women were prostitutes while at another he was also obliquely recognising one of the dirtier secrets of Georgian society: male use of prostitutes and even a past history of Georgian importation of Russian women - the Natashas - driven to work as prostitutes in Georgia by the economic chaos of 1990s Russia.

For all the recent public fighting about the alleged secularisation and supposed sexual chaos of Georgia's modernisation, little has changed for many women: there is not much sign that the "sexual revolution" of the western 1960s has followed the Rose Revolution.

Women are expected to be virgins on marriage. But for men very different rules can apply - a visit to the Natashas is often an expected part of coming of age. But - of course - no one likes to talk about these things.

Georgia's Human Rights Centre is therefore likely to leave more than a few uncomfortable with their report, from yesterday, of prostitution seemingly going on at a "sauna" in a hotel in the city centre of Rustavi while the police stand by and do nothing.

Comments from members of the public illustrate perfectly the hypocrisy that surrounds much of sexual mores in Georgia. One takes the see-no-evil position: "I know that similar places will always work but it should not happen in the city center. They should work in the suburbs."

While another openly defends the idea of prostitution: "There always were similar institutions in the country because they are necessary. Do you want the boys of Rustavi to be virgin?!"

But perhaps even more interesting is the way that the hotel's manager and the sauna's owner seem perfectly at ease when confronted over the issue. Clearly the HRC's journalist had their interest piqued:

When we speak about the prostitution, the society is curious about the person who protects similar institutions. During the governance of the ex-president Shevardnadze similar institutions were protected by the law enforcement officials and they used the prostitutes as informers. It is difficult to say whether the patrol police inherited this function from the old police. However, they are entitled to investigate the situation in the suspicious institutions. And one more thing, during our journalistic survey, a patrol police car was standing near the sauna for 15-20 minutes.