Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili was meeting in Berlin on Wednesday with German officials as well as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice amid tensions between his country and Russia, reported ap. In meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Saakashvili was expected to discuss Georgia's troubled relationship with Russia and simmering conflict in Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. «Russia must not use 20th century military might to solve 21st century problems,» Saakashvili said Tuesday in a lecture at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, an international policy institute in Berlin. Saakashvili had breakfast Wednesday with Rice, who was in Berlin for a conference on helping improve Palestinian security, but details of their meeting were not immediately available. Relations between Russia and Georgia have deteriorated since Saakashvili came to power in 2004. Recent disputes have centered on the two breakaway regions, which have been outside the Georgian government's control since the end of separatist wars in the mid-1990s. Russia increased the number of its peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia this spring, drawing charges from Georgia that Russia was attempting to annex the regions. «Russia is no longer recognizing agreed-upon post-Soviet borders,» Saakashvili said in Berlin. Last month Georgia accused Russia of shooting down a spy drone over Abkhazia. Russia denied the claim, but a study by U.N. observers concluded that a Russian fighter did shoot down the drone. Georgia wants the European Union and Germany to help mediate an end to the rift. A nation about the size of South Carolina and home to 4.5 million people, Georgia borders Russia to the south along the Black Sea. Its location, described by Saakashvili on Tuesday as «at the heart of the circulatory system that brings energy to Europe,» makes it a frequent conflict point between Russia and the West. «My country (is) situated as a front-line partner to free up additional flows of energy for European and global markets,» Saakashvili said. Moscow scored a major foreign policy victory in April when NATO declined to offer membership to Georgia. At a NATO conference in Romania in April, U.S. president George W. Bush lobbied for Georgia and Ukraine to be put on a path to NATO membership. But European leaders, including Merkel, balked, saying Georgia and Ukraine are too unstable and underdeveloped to start moving toward membership. «We are convinced that it is too early to grant both states the action plan status,» Merkel said then. Saakashvili, a lawyer educated at Columbia University, has worked to frame himself as a democrat and a reformer. But his pro-Western reputation was tarnished last November after police used tear gas and rubber bullets to put down anti-government protests. «We used the same rubber clubs, the same tear gas that German police use,» Saakashvili said on Tuesday when a questioner asked him to defend his use of force. In the wake of the disturbances, he called for early elections to be held in January and narrowly won a new five-year term. His United National Movement party also won a majority of seats in parliamentary elections in May.
