Georgia announced pulling out of CIS (Video, photo)
- 12.08.2008, 15:41
Georgia made decision to pull out of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said this on Tuesday at the meeting in front of the building of Georgian parliament in the centre of Tbilisi.
As said by him, he has already instructed on that. “We are leaving the CIS for good… and call on Ukraine and other countries leave this body run by Russia," Saakashvili told a big rally in his support outside Georgia`s parliament.
Besides, Georgian president said that he declares Russia's troops deployed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia occupational forces. He promised not to let aggressors get off lightly, and stated that “air raids continue and his citizens are dying” at that moment.
“As a president of Georgia I am in a very difficult situation in front of you. Yesterday I saw with my own eyes our land bombed, and realized I can do noting at that moment to defend my nation from that,” Mikheil Saakashvili said.
Tbilisi’s mayor Gigi Ugulava addressed the meeting as well. He said: “The countries and organisations, from which we expected aid, have fallen short of expectations. We received help from countries and organisations from which we hadn’t expected it”. Georgian Parlimanet’s speaker David Barkharadze announced that Georgia won’t leave attempts to get back Abkhazia and South Ossetia: “We shall do everything to make Tskhinvali and Sukhumi ours, in ten, hundred or thousand years.” Bakharadze has compared the Georgian nation with Israeli, and said that “the Israelites were looking for their land for 2000 years and tried to create their own state, and they achieved their aim”.
The meeting in support of peace started in Tbilisi an hour ago. Several thousands people are taking part in the even. Journalists say.
The Georgian authorities state that Russian air forces are bombing populated points at the territory of Georgia. The Russian side disproves these statements and emphasizes that air forces are attacking only strategic objects which could be used for attacking South Ossetia.
