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Georgian Crowd Embraces Bush
President Bush and Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili are greeted warmly by a cheering crowd in Freedom Square in central Tbilisi.
(David Mdzinarishvili - Reuters)
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But in a message calibrated to please Russia, Bush warned Georgia to respect the rights of its minority Abkhaz and Ossetian populations. Senior U.S. officials said before the trip that Bush planned to urge Saakashvili in private talks not to take provocative actions in the regions.
Bush also volunteered to help mediate a dispute over Russia's two remaining Soviet-era military bases in Georgia. Moscow has failed to fulfill a 1999 agreement to withdraw 3,500 troops it has in Georgia. In recent talks, Georgian officials insisted they leave by 2008, but Moscow balked. In response, the Georgian president on Monday boycotted Moscow's 60th anniversary celebration of the end of World War II.
Saakashvili, educated at George Washington University and Columbia University School of Law, came to international attention when he mobilized tens of thousands of demonstrators into Freedom Square to protest electoral fraud.
His campaign culminated in November 2003 when he burst into Parliament with a rose demanding the resignation of Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister. Saakashvili was elected president -- with Shevardnadze's support -- and set about remaking a country on the verge of collapse, where electricity often did not work, retirees scraped by on $7 a month and the government was suffused with corruption.
Saakashvili's boundless energy and buoyant optimism have made him a favorite in Washington, and Bush has clearly been taken with him. The president told interviewers before leaving Washington that he decided to make the trip in part because of Saakashvili's enthusiasm in inviting him.
While still broadly popular at home, Saakashvili has stirred growing criticism with a brash and impetuous manner. His blunt candor and thirst for radical change that appeal to many people strike others as needlessly confrontational. Some critics complain he has concentrated power at the expense of the opposition and the news media. To discourage the notion of one-man rule, Bush made a point of meeting here with Parliament Speaker Nino Burdzhanadze, who, while allied with Saakashvili, remains an independent political figure.
Saakashvili said the visit would embolden would-be revolutionaries. "Georgia provides a living example that democracy can work in this part of the world . . . and I think that's the message President Bush is sending to the outside world by coming here," he told reporters.
Among those watching from Freedom Square on Tuesday was Anatol Liabedzka, chairman of the opposition United People's Party in Belarus, whose government was labeled "the last dictatorship in Europe" by Rice last month.
Liabedzka and a colleague held up a banner: "Freedom Belarus." It was drawn during the morning at the office of the International Republican Institute, a U.S.-funded group that promotes democracy. Liabedzka planned to meet with Saakashvili in the evening to garner support for the Belarusan opposition. Liabedzka, whose allies met with Rice recently, said Bush's visit here would bolster his efforts in Belarus.
"It means that yesterday Tbilisi, today Kiev, tomorrow Minsk," the Belarusan capital, he said.
VandeHei reported from Washington.
