MOSCOW, August 4 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili is for him an “absolutely non-handshakable” person.
“From the very beginning we did not have a target of having the regime changed, even though Mister Saakashvili for clear reasons for me and my colleagues is an absolutely non-handshakable person, and I consider him to be a war criminal,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Russia Today television channel on Sunday, while commenting on the events of August, 2008. “However, we do believe, and did so earlier, that the people should clear everything out with their leaders, and Georgia, I have always stressed so, and by the way even during the first meeting with Saakashvili, has a state sovereignty in the limits of its borders.”
“As for the territory integrity /of Georgia/, there were certain problems here, and they emerged back in the 1990s,” Medvedev said. “But nobody has ever stopped Georgians and Georgia’s leaders from putting together their country, and that should have been done slowly, accurately, by reaching mutual agreements.”
The Russian prime minister said “at a certain moment, perhaps, there were chances to organise if not a federation, then a confederation and to live and exist somehow jointly, but the time was missed.”
“It was Saakashvili who tore apart his own country.”
Speaking about Russia’s role in the Georgia - South Ossetia conflict, the Prime Minister stressed “this very conflict, this mission prove the best way that we have always followed purely peaceful objectives, we restored the order, which was to be there, and were gone.”