BAKU - A former Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has said that the Ukrainian government offered him a high public office but he links his future with Georgia.
“Of course, I will return to Georgia to help my people. My career belongs to my people,” Saakashvili said in an interview with the Azeri ANS TV Channel.
The Ukrainian government had recently offered him the post of deputy prime minister, he said.
“It was a big honor for me. In that case I would have to acquire a Ukrainian citizenship and renounce the Georgian one. But I did not do that. Because I believe that my country, Georgia, has a big future. I will be building this future with my people,” Saakashvili said.
He declined to comment on the request by the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office for Baku to extradite the ex-president.
Georgian media outlets said that Saakashvili was in Baku to attend the third Global Shared Societies Forum. He arrived as a Ukrainian official.
It emerged earlier that the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office asked Azeri authorities to arrest Saakashvili, who is an international fugitive, and extradite him to Tbilisi, but has not heard from Baku yet.
“Under the bilateral cooperation format existing between the two countries, Georgian prosecutors asked Azerbaijan to arrest and extradite ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili,” Deputy Prosecutor General Irakli Shotadze told reporters.
“However, we have yet to receive a reply from the Azerbaijan Prosecutor General’s Office. There is no specific deadline for the reply to be obtained, but apparently, there has been no relevant reaction,” he said.
He said he could not say that Azerbaijan refused to extradite Saakashvili until there is a formal letter to that effect.
Earlier Georgian prosecutors repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked Ukraine to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia.
