APPEAL OF THE GEORGIAN PARLIAMENT TO THE ABKHAZ PEOPLE

It has been nine months that a fratricidal war has been going on in Abkhazia. Thousands of people died, hundreds of thousands of families have suffered, towns and villages have been ruined and devastated; the area that God created as a paradise starts to resemble hell, and can be deserted by both Abkhazians and Georgians unless we timely come to reason.

Probably we should at least now think and understand that the war serves the interests of those who want to rehabilitate the ‘empire of evil’, that all misunderstanding between ourselves, between Georgians and Abkhazians living in brotherhood in united Georgia for centuries, has been imposed on us exactly by the ‘Empire of Evil’, and only together we can free ourselves from it.

Let us recall the times when our ancestors were strong and winning – it was only when they were together in need and joy, in defending and restoring their common motherland, when they fully believed that any Abkhazian problem was also a Georgian problem, and that there was no Georgian problem that an Abkhazian could stay indifferent about. Let us not betray the brotherhood of our ancestors, nor disturb their saint spirits.

Let us think about our children and grandchildren, and refrain from the unpardonable sin – they should live together, in neighborhood, if only we give them a chance to survive.

The Parliament of Georgia calls representatives of the Abkhaz people, elders, deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic to meet anytime and anyplace to consider and settle all problems that exist between ourselves, as it would beseem the Abkhaz and Georgian peoples and our chivalric traditions.

Tbilisi, 22 April 1993

(Bulletin of the Parliament of Georgia, ## 5-8, 1993, pp. 146-147)