WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday dismissed opposition claims that he wants to stay in power as prime minister when his term expires next year, saying his country "can have no Putin."
Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia since 2000 as both president and prime minister and looks set to win March presidential election despite public discontent against his grip on power.
Saakashvili’s opponents charge that the 43-year-old leader, who rode to power in a bloodless "Rose Revolution" in 2003, wants to stay in power and plans to become prime minister as the head of his United National Movement, which has a large majority in parliament.
"The last thing I want to do is to turn myself into a lame duck by speculating about my own future," Saakashvili told a group of reporters in Washington.
"People ask me, ‘Are you going to be Putin?’ By definition Georgia can have no Putin. Georgia is not Russia and we are right now doing things that would enable us never have anything like Putin in Georgia," Saakashvili said, joking that at 43 he was too old for a political career.
Georgia approved constitutional reforms in 2010 that changed the former Soviet republic’s presidential system to a "mixed one" with a more powerful premier and parliament as of 2013, when Saakashvili’s second term ends.
Relations between Georgia and larger neighbor Russia have been strained since Saakashvili ousted post-Soviet leader Eduard Sheveradnadze in the 2003 revolution and vowed to move the country out from under Moscow’s influence.
The neighbors fought a brief war in August 2008 when Russia crushed an assault by Georgia’s U.S.-trained military on the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia, launched after skirmishes with separatists and months of Russian baiting.
Since the war, the countries have had no diplomatic relations and Saakashvili said on Tuesday they were "technically" still at war, with Russian troops still occupying parts of Georgia’s territory.
Saakashvili is currently on a visit to the United States and U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday they were exploring the possibility of a free trade agreement.
On Tuesday, he addressed a standing room only crowd at the World Bank on how Georgia had successfully shed decades of corruption, the theme of a new World Bank book.
The World Bank said Georgia has had "unique success" in fighting corruption in public services, at a time when most countries are struggling with the same problems.
It said Georgia’s success destroyed the myth that corruption is cultural.
"Georgia has proven that success can be achieved in a relatively short period of time given strong political will and concerted action by the government," the Bank said.
