Saakashvili delivers ultimatum

An extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council at the Georgian State Chancellery was over in the evening on May 2. President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia made a special statement that the Georgian leadership gave Aslan Abashidze, head of the Ajarian Autonomous Republic, 10 days to "re-acknowledge the constitutional jurisdiction."

"He must restore normal life in Georgia, give up arms, and cease to violate human rights," the statement notes. Otherwise, the president threatened to dissolve Ajaria's government and appoint new elections of the republican leadership. "As a president I must keep peace in Georgia, but I will not allow any dark force to prevent the nation from advance," Saakashvili said. He also emphasized he hoped Ajaria's population would support the central government. At the same time, Saakashvili called the republican leadership "the last enemy force" in Georgia that was doing its best to destabilize the situation in the country. "Aslan Abashidze carries out mass repressions and murders but no such fact has been investigated," the Georgian president said.

Speaking about the exploded bridges and dismantled railway in Ajaria, Saakashvili remarked the republican leadership's excuses were absolutely senseless. Abashidze had been put on his guard by the Georgian Defense Ministry's large-scale maneuvers in the immediate vicinity of the administrative border with Ajaria which he had evaluated as an armed invasion attempt. However, the Georgian president said the Ajarian leader had been well aware those had been just maneuvers, so "by exploding the bridges he tried to provoke an armed conflict with the center to stay in power."