Bush hails 'the seeds of freedom' in visit to former Soviet republic

Georgia supports the president's commitment to the advance of democracy.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
TBILISI, Georgia -- Comparing the peaceful protest that revived democracy in this former Soviet republic with the persistent armed struggle for freedom in Iraq, President Bush told tens of thousands of cheering Georgians on Tuesday that their 2003 Rose Revolution is a beacon for the world.
"Your courage is inspiring democratic reformers and spreading a message that echoes throughout the world," Bush told the teeming crowd in sun-splashed Freedom Square, where demonstrators cheered the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and forced the resignation 12 years later of then-President Eduard Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister.
"The seeds of freedom that were planted on Georgia's soil are flowering across the world," said Bush, his audience filling a plaza ringed by an ornate city hall, old Georgian banks and a new American hotel.
Bush, who muted his public criticism of Russia while visiting Red Square this week, returned here to a theme he had raised in Latvia at the start of his five-day European trip -- the need for Russia to live with its democratic neighbors.
Message from Putin
He also relayed a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia will make good its delayed pledge to remove two military bases from Georgia.
The festival-like appearance of the president in a square where protests led to Shevardnadze's resignation and the election of a young, reform-minded leader culminated with acrobatic dancers in native costume and choirs performing for the crowd on a crisp spring afternoon.
It reportedly was the largest assembly in the streets of Tbilisi since Georgians rallied against Shevardnadze in the Rose Revolution that brought President Mikhail Saakashvili to power. In fact, Saakashvili told Bush at a joint news conference that this crowd was bigger.
"You know, right now we have in the streets of Tbilisi, as they are telling me, more than 150,000 people assembled," said Saakashvili, standing alongside Bush in a marbled four-story atrium of the Georgian Parliament building before the public rally.
"I can tell you, no event in the history of this country has ever assembled anything close to these numbers," he said. "It was very genuine. This is not North Korea here. You cannot tell people to go out unless ... For me, it was something very emotional."
Forward-looking theme
This was precisely the chord Bush had hoped to strike at the close of his European tour. While much of Bush's mission focused on highlighting the painful history of Europe after World War II and commemorating victory over Nazi Germany 60 years ago, the White House was intent on going home with a forward-looking theme.
And few places support Bush's second-term theme -- his inaugural commitment to the advance of democracy and "ending tyranny in the world" -- more than Georgia.
In this mountainous country of 4.7 million, which was under Soviet rule for much of the 20th century and did not gain independence until 1991, democratic institutions have taken hold since adoption of a constitution in 1995.
The country boasts of a robust educational exchange program with the United States, with many of the young volunteers who worked around the perimeter of Bush's ballyhooed visit telling of their years of study at places such as the University of Minnesota or State University of New York at Oswego.
The plaza where Georgians rallied to see the American president was known as Lenin Square when Soviet tanks rumbled in in 1989 to quell an independence movement.