Georgia president cautions citizens against stoking ethnic tensions

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI
.c The Associated Press

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – President Mikhail Saakashvili warned Georgians
against stoking ethnic tensions as authorities continue investigating
the man who confessed to throwing a live grenade during a rally where
U.S. President George W. Bush spoke.

Speaking in a meeting with law enforcement officials Tuesday evening,
Saakashvili scolded Georgian media for focusing on the ethnicity of
Vladimir Arutyunian, a Georgian citizen of Armenian ancestry who has
admitted throwing the grenade during the May rally in Tbilisi where
Bush and Saakashvili spoke.

Saakashvili said media and politicians were overemphasizing
Arutyunian’s Armenian background.

“For me, it makes no difference what nationality the children of our
homeland are,” he said.

“If someone doesn’t love Armenians, then I am an Armenian. And if
it’s Ossetians, then I am an Ossetian,” he said, “because Georgian
patriotism is valued not by blood, but by the deeds of such people.”

Arutyunian’s lawyer said Tuesday that the man had intended to kill
Bush, but not other Georgians.

Georgian authorities, working with the FBI, were still trying to
figure out Arutyunian’s exact motives. The Interior Ministry said that
Arutyunian, who was formally charged with terrorism on Tuesday, was
believed to have been a member of a political party that supports the
former leader of a region largely outside central government control.

Last week, Arutyunian was shown on local television admitting to
throwing the grenade, which landed about 100 feet (30 meters) away
from the stage where Saakashvili and Bush were standing behind a
bulletproof barrier. It did not explode, and investigators later said
it apparently had malfunctioned. No one was harmed in the incident.

Saakashvili also warned against overemphasizing the fact that three
men detained on suspicion of carrying out a Feb. 1 car bombing that
killed three policemen and wounded 26 in the town of Gori were
Ossetians.

“Yesterday, all I heard all day on television was ‘Ossetians,
Ossetians,”’ he said.

He said Ossetians had served with honor in Georgia’s air force and its
police agencies.

Relations between Georgians and Ossetians have long been tense; South
Ossetia broke away from central government control during a war in the
1990s.

Tensions spiked earlier this month in a mostly ethnic Armenian region
when a Georgian-language school was vandalized and a group of Georgian
university students were beaten up.

Residents of the region are angered over the planned withdrawal of a
Russian military base, which is a mainstay of the local
economy. Ethnic Armenians make up more than 5 percent of Georgia’s 4.7
million people.

07/27/05 05:38 EDT