UN General Assembly
2010

patience and calm. We implemented — fully — the ceasefire agreement and went beyond our obligations, without ever using as a pretext Russia’s refusal to comply. Last month, the head of the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia, Ambassador Haber, publicly praised Georgian policy as “constructive unilateralism”. What does constructive unilateralism mean? It refers, for instance, to our calm when militias supported by Russia’s federal security service (FSB) killed our policemen at the occupation line, or to our willingness to free criminals working for the occupation regime when the other side was kidnapping teenagers who wanted to visit their empty house just after their school time. Constructive unilateralism means that we behave in a civilized and patient way, even when our enemy uses barbaric methods or implements an impulsive and irrational policy. It means that — even if peace requires both sides to come to the negotiating table — one can pave the way to peace on one’s own, without the other side’s cooperating. This constructive unilateralism is based on the