Monday, 26 January 2004

GEORGIA\'S NEW PRESIDENT PUSHES UNITY BID

Published in News Digest

By empty (1/26/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)

President Mikhail Saakashvili pushed ahead with efforts to unify Georgia on Monday, the day after his inauguration, signing a declaration on reconciliation in a church ceremony. Saakashvili has made the consolidation of a country riven by separatism and political disputes a key goal after the November ouster of longtime President Eduard Shevardnadze, and he said he intends to \"put an end to disunity in our society.\" The declaration is to be followed by the amnesty of 30 prisoners arrested after post-Soviet Georgia\'s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, made an armed attempt to regain power from Shevardnadze in 1993, said lawmaker Eldar Shengelaia.
President Mikhail Saakashvili pushed ahead with efforts to unify Georgia on Monday, the day after his inauguration, signing a declaration on reconciliation in a church ceremony. Saakashvili has made the consolidation of a country riven by separatism and political disputes a key goal after the November ouster of longtime President Eduard Shevardnadze, and he said he intends to \"put an end to disunity in our society.\" The declaration is to be followed by the amnesty of 30 prisoners arrested after post-Soviet Georgia\'s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, made an armed attempt to regain power from Shevardnadze in 1993, said lawmaker Eldar Shengelaia. Gamsakhurdia, who died in mysterious circumstances after the takeover bid failed late in 1993, was buried in Grozny, the capital of the neighboring Russian region of Chechnya. Saakashvili, who had strong support from former backers of Gamsakhurdia when he led opposition protests that prompted Shevardnadze\'s resignation in November, called for Gamsakhurdia to be reburied in Georgia. \"Gamsakhurdia was a big patriot of Georgia and should be reburied in his homeland,\" Saakashvili said. Saakashvili signed the declaration in the presence of the leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II, in a church across the street from parliament, where he took the presidential oath on Sunday. The euphoria that followed Shevardnadze\'s ouster was on display during the inauguration, which was attended by thousands of people on a warm, sunny day in the capital. Saakashvili was elected with more than 96 percent of the vote Jan. 4. But reality set in on his first full day as president, with a power outage that municipal electric company officials said left about 30 percent of the city without electricity for hours. Georgia is plagued by energy problems, and outages and unheated homes are common signs of persistent economic troubles. (AP)
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