GEORGIAN BUDGET WILL NOT COPE WITH REPATRIATION OF MESKHETI TURKS
PanARMENIAN.Net
27.04.2006 23:04 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ 35 thousand Meskheti Turks live in the territory of
Turkey today, reported State Minister for Conflict Settlement and Chair
of the State Commission on Repatriation of Refugees Georgi Khaindrava
at a news conference in Tbilisi. In his words, when entering the CE
Georgia pledged to return Meskheti Turks to their fatherland. The
year 2011 is determined the term for repatriation.
“We do not know yet, how many of the Meskheti Turks living in Turkey
want to return to their fatherland, however the process should comprise
all the country and they should return not only to Samtskhe-Javakheti,
from where they were exiled during the Stalin regime in 1944,” the
State Minister said. He emphasized that if those people consider
Georgia their fatherland, they should settle in any part of its
territory.
Khaindrava remarked the Georgian budget will not be able to cope with
repatriation of Meskheti Turks.
An international conference on the repatriation of Meskheti Turks
to Georgia will be held in Tbilisi on 27 April. The forthcoming
conference will come as the last stage, which will be followed by
the process of repatriation of Meskheti Turks to their historic lands.
Organized by the Council of Europe Commission on National Minority
Rights of and the Georgian Government, the forum will bring together
representatives from Meskheti Turk communities residing in different
countries. A law on repatriation is to be adopted by the Georgian
Parliament on the same day. The conference will mull over the
places for repatriation of Meskheti Turks to the regions of Georgia,
Trend reports.