MOSCOW, August 8 (Itar-Tass) — Russia is ready to develop mutually advantageous relations with Georgia, but it refuses “to have anything to do with Mikhail Saakashvili”, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
“We do not associate the Georgian people with his personage. We are ready to develop business-like, pragmatic, mutually advantageous contacts with Georgia, besides Mikhail Saakashvili himself, in all fields,” Lavrov stressed.
“Mikhail Saakashvili is, of course, a pathology and abnormity against the Georgian people. In addition, he is a person, who has bad education. We will not have anything to do with a person who issued a criminal order to kill peacekeepers and who issued an order to kill innocent civilians, including Russian citizens,” the minister said.
Lavrov also recalled that Russia and Georgia “have never interrupted energy cooperation”. “Air service has resumed,” he added. “Recently, it has been expanded. I mean such cities as Yekaterinburg and Kutaisi. Air service between St. Petersburg and Tbilisi also functions. We maintain humanitarian contacts.”
The Russian foreign minister said, “Georgian officials, who forced to use the anti-Russian rhetoric in their speeches, gave signals to us to hold meetings and restore contacts.” “We are ready for this if Georgia wants to restore normal relations for the benefit of our citizens and not to engage in polemic,” Lavrov said.
Earlier, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he came in favour of organising an international court over actions of Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili.
But he stressed that the sole view of Russia is not sufficient.
“If I were asked /about an option to organise an international court over Saakashvili/, I would say ‘yes’, merely because I believe that it /aggression against South Ossetia/ was an outrageous violation of international law norms,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station, Russia Today and Georgia-based First Caucasus News.
“But since I doubt it possible to rely on Russia’s position only, I believe a tribunal of the kind is not realistic at the moment.”
“Thus history will make the final judgment, and Georgian electors – the interim one,” he added.
Speaking generally about the institute of international court, be it over Saakashvili or over Hosni Mubarak, Medvedev called that possible.
“But if it is a political voluntarism, a desire to remove a leader, then I am against it,” he said.