Full Transcript: Saakashvili on CBS Morning Show

August 13, 2008 by Pelikan
Filed under: Russian/Georgian Conflict 

Georgian Leader Interviewed by Harry Smith

HARRY SMITH, co-host: Joining us from Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital city, is the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili. Good morning, Mr. President.

President MIKHAIL SAAKASHVILI (Georgian President): Good morning, sir.

SMITH: Please tell me what is the situation in your country now? We are hearing conflicting reports about what is happening in Gori. We understand that the Russians are very active even as we speak in that town, not so many miles away from Tbilisi?

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: Well, situation is dramatic. We are witnessing a new stage of full-blown Russian invasion and aggression against my country and what we have–the situation developing on three different fronts.

First, in the Georgia…(unintelligible)…region of South Ossetia, where Russian tanks are going through villages inhabited by Georgian population and throwing people out of the houses, putting people into concentration camps that they are setting up in those villages and separating men and women and doing worse kinds of atrocities, unheard of since Balkans or since the war in Chechnya.

SMITH: Hm.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: The other thing is Upper Abkhazia, in the region of Abkhazia, which is several hundred kilometers–miles away removed from the South Ossetia where they’re going through villages again inhabited by Georgians and throwing out every single Georgian man or woman and children.

And the third one is that they have moved into the town of Gori and they rampage the town, looted the town. These are regular Russian troops. They go into houses, they destroy houses. There is all this documentary footage around that can prove it.

SMITH: Hm.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: This is not he said, she said, you know. It’s–we are lucky that there are television stations around and they’re taking things like, you know, furniture, toilet seats, killing people, terrorizing people. What we are seeing now is deja vu from, you know, when Soviet Union was doing these things in the past.

SMITH: Hm.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: When Czechoslovakia was invaded by Nazi Germany…

SMITH: Mm-hmm.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: …after pact in Munich in 1938, so there should be…(unintelligible)…to the West.

SMITH: Right.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: Italy’s appeasement, like they did with Germany over Czechoslovakia when Chamberlain, the then British prime minister said, `Oh, we don’t care about Czechoslovakia, it’s far away country about which we know very little’ or say that democracy’s at stake. You know, I heard yesterday Senator McCain saying `we are all Georgians now.’ I hope people understand that these are their values at stake. This is freedom in general at stake.

This is not about some far away remote country in which we know little. I mean, Georgia is very, very modern, normal country.

SMITH: President Mikhail Saakashvili. We thank you very much for your time this morning.

Pres. SAAKASHVILI: Thank you so much.

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