"Georgia does not plan to export revolutions, and any allegations that it does are insulting," Mikheil Saakashvili told an international security conference in Tbilisi that began February 17.
The series of "color revolutions" that have sprung up in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia during the past 18 months have been a cause of concern in Russia, which has repeatedly warned against the dangers of political upheaval in neighboring states.
Georgian-Russian relations have deteriorated since the beginning of the year, with a scandal over energy supplies to Georgia, and the ongoing dispute over the presence of Russian peacekeeping forces in the Georgian breakaway republic of South Ossetia.
On Thursday, Georgian lawmakers criticized the Russian peacekeepers' efforts in the zone, accusing them of siding with separatists, and adopted a resolution to replace them with an international contingent.
At the conference in Georgia's capital, the president urged the international experts to assess the current situation in the Tskhinvali Region (the Georgian name for South Ossetia).
The president said, "We have been accused of overreacting, but what would you do if the leader of separatist forces threatened to eliminate peacekeepers of any nationality who try to replace the Russian military in South Ossetia?"
He added that Tbilisi's peace plan for Tskhinvali provided everything that the Ossetian people had ever asked for in terms of autonomy.
Russia's peacekeeping contingent was deployed in South Ossetia in the early 1990s to ensure the implementation of ceasefire agreements after a war during which the rebellious region had broken away from Georgia's control.
Tensions in the conflict zone escalated recently when Georgian police detained a Russian peacekeeping truck involved in a traffic accident near South Ossetia and introduced visas for Russian peacekeepers.
Georgia's pro-Western leadership has repeatedly accused Moscow of siding with South Ossetian separatists and supplying them with arms. The president has repeatedly vowed to bring South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under Georgia's control.
