Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili appealed to the European Union on Tuesday for solidarity in his country's stand-off with Russia, telling EU lawmakers Georgians would not allow a repeat of Soviet history.
The pro-Western leader called for the EU to involve itself in negotiations to help resolve Georgia's disputes with Moscow. He also warned Europeans they too could face politically motivated gas price increases if Russia got away with doing that to Georgia.
"Today, because we have chosen to move as close as possible to Europe and to align ourselves with Euro-Atlantic structures, Georgia is punished," Saakashvili said in an address to the European Parliament.
Irked by the pro-Western Georgian leader's drive to join the EU and above all the US-led Nato military alliance, Russia has severed trade and transport links and hardened its backing for two breakaway regions of Georgia.
Saakashvili accused Moscow of mounting an economic blockade of his former Soviet republic and trying to exert political pressure by more than doubling its gas price. "If Georgia can get a political gas increase, any other country can get it tomorrow," he told a news conference. He said Tbilisi would not pay the more than doubled price the Russian monopoly Gazprom was demanding since it was not a "commercial" price comparable with what other neighbours paid.
Recalling the Soviet take-over of Georgia in the name of protecting minorities, Saakashvili declared: "We will not allow this history to be repeated, whatever it takes." "After all ... it is 2006 and not 1956 or 1968," he said, citing the dates of Soviet-led invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia to crush pro-democracy movements.
He compared Russia's economic pressure with tactics Moscow used to try to stop three ex-Soviet Baltic states from joining the EU and Nato, but which he said had only accelerated their integration into Western structures. His 45-minute speech won a standing ovation.
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