Biden brings tough love to Georgia

By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press Writer

TBILISI, Georgia – A year after Georgia's disastrous war with Russia, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden assured the small country on Thursday that the United States stands behind it in their continuing conflicts with their region's dominant power.

But his message was tempered by tough love.

While saying Russia should withdraw its forces from two separatist Georgian regions, Biden also said Georgia should abandon any hopes of reclaiming those regions by force.

Further, he assured that the United States would stand behind Georgia's sovereignty, but Georgia must still strive to build a democratic society, six years after its peaceful Rose Revolution ousted a Soviet-era leader and brought President Mikhail Saakashvili to power.

"Your Rose Revolution will only be complete when government is transparent, accountable and fully participatory, when issues are debated inside this chamber, not only out on the streets," Biden told federal and local officials from across the former Soviet republic.

Georgia's opposition has held street protests since April to call for Saakashvili to step down, saying he has grown increasingly authoritarian.

Few nations are more pro-American than Georgia, and the audience listened in rapt silence for most of the speech delivered in the ornate chamber of the country's parliament building.

But Biden won several standing ovations when he criticized Russia's actions during and after its August 2008 war with Georgia. He pledged that the Obama administration would not abandon Georgia even as it sought to mend relations with Moscow, badly damaged by the Russian-Georgian war.

"I come here on behalf of the United States with a simple, straightforward message: We, the United States, stand by you on your journey to a secure, free and democratic, and once again united, Georgia," Biden said, bringing the audience to its feet.

After the outbreak of fighting in the separatist-held territory of South Ossetia, Russia sent tanks, troops and warplanes deep into Georgia in August.

Moscow later recognized the independence claims of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a separatist-held territory on the Black Sea. Only Nicaragua has followed suit.

Biden told the crowd that Georgia's best hope for reclaiming its lost territories wasn't military action — it was building a free, prosperous society that those territories would want to join.

"It's a sad certainty but it is true, there is no military option to reintegration," he said.

Saakashvili welcomed Biden's visit, saying it demonstrated the strong bonds between the two nations.

Biden also met with opposition leaders, who later praised the message he brought and his support for Georgia's sovereignty.

Irakly Alasania, a Saakashvili critic and former Georgian ambassador to the United Nations, lauded Biden's call for political and social reforms.

Biden told opposition leaders the U.S. stood behind the country, not Saakashvili individually, and "that the choice of president and a government is a matter for the Georgian people and not for any other state," said Nino Burdzhanadze, a former speaker of parliament.

Biden delivered the speech near the end of his two-day visit to Tbilisi, during which he and Saakashvili have discussed economic aid and a proposal for $16 million next year for military training and reorganization, officials on both sides said.

Biden's national security adviser Tony Blinken and a senior Georgian adviser denied that Saakashvili had asked Biden for anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and U.S. participation in an EU observer mission along its border with the disputed regions. The U.S. official who had told that to reporters earlier Thursday said later he had spoken in error.

Saakashvili has previously expressed a strong interest in acquiring U.S. weapons as he seeks to rebuild his military after the war, and Georgian officials in recent days have said they wanted the U.S. to join the observer mission.

But Blinken said the Georgians have not formally requested heavy weapons, and that the EU has not invited U.S. participation in the mission. Blinken did not rule out the U.S. providing either after a formal request.

In Moscow, the government said it would not stand by while Georgia was resupplied with weapons.

"We will continue inhibiting rearmament of the Saakashvili regime," Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Georgia is one of the world's biggest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, receiving about $1 billion from Washington over the past year — most toward reconstruction and humanitarian relief.

Saakashvili said he remarked to Biden during a meal: "I told you there was no such thing as a free dinner in Georgia."