Georgia’s President meets the Emperor of Japan

Georgia’s President Giorgi Margvelashvili is on an official visit to Japan and continuing meeting high Japanese officials.

Today, the President Margvelashvili and the first lady visited Japanese Emperor Akihito.

Emperor Akihito, 81, is the 125th Emperor of his line, according to Japan’s traditional order of succession. He is the only remaining monarch in the world who reigned under the title of ‘Emperor’.

Today’s official meeting between Margvelashvili and Emperor Akihito was held behind closed doors.

Meanwhile yesterday, Margvelashvili delivered a speech at the Sasakava Peace Foundation. In his speech the President highlighted that Georgia would resolve its territorial integrity problems through peaceful means.

"We will not resolve these problems by military means but by the involvement of the population living in the breakaway areas in the positive processes of Georgia," President Margvelashvili said.

He spoke about Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future and emphasized that there were examples when countries with territorial problems became NATO members.

You can take a look at the history of NATO and you will find that there is no requirement that countries must have resolved their territorial problems. For example, look at Germany. It was considered as a single nation but there were two states, one of which was a NATO member. I’ve seen in the past 25 years that Europe is expanding, NATO is increasing, the European Union and NATO borders are coming closer to Russia and Russia has the most peaceful borders with the EU and NATO, he said.

In his speech Margvelashvili also spoke about the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

When asked by a Japanese journalist whether he thought Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili was guilty in connection to the war, Margvelashvili responded: "Georgia cannot declare war against Russia on its own territory. As you know these areas are the territories of Georgia.”

Maybe some mistakes were made but the occupation of my country should not be legalized. The agreement was signed between Sarkozy and Medvedev after August 2008, providing the regulation of the issue and not the topic related to the recognition of independence of these territories, Margvelashvili said.

The Georgian delegation will return home tomorrow.