Georgia condemns 'immoral deals'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Georgia's president told CNN Sunday that the Yalta conference ending World War II created "one of the most immoral deals in the history of mankind."
Mikhail Saakashvili's comments echoed the remarks of U.S. President George W. Bush a day earlier about the deal that put smaller countries along the borders of the Soviet Union in the iron fist of a monolithic communist regime.
Bush met Saturday with leaders of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, three nations once under communist rule, and travels Monday to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
"Keeping small nations enslaved because of the deals between the great nations or because of any pragmatic considerations that might have been there are totally inacceptable," Saakashvili told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"You can understand mixed feelings that people might have here," Saakashvili said.
"On the one hand, we knew what an evil was fascism, and we respect the people who defeated that and took part in the defeat of fascists. But on the other hand, we had Soviet totalitarian regimes that kept all those people in Eastern Europe ... enslaved."
Saakashvili has declined to attend ceremonies marking the end of World War II on Monday in Moscow, where Bush is before flying to Tblisi.
He said he was not specifically boycotting the event, but had said earlier he would not attend unless significant progress had been made towards an agreement for Russia to remove military bases in Georgia.
"And for a while it really looked like we would have some progress," he said, but then later "the talks got stuck."
He said he had high hopes, however, for successful negotiations and spoke Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"It was one of the best conversations I've ever had with him," he said. "I think he understood why I did not go to Moscow."
The West-leaning Saakashvili was swept into power by the 2003 "Rose Revolution" protests that toppled veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze.
