President congratulates the Georgian people on the New Year

The President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili began his New Year congratulation speech with these words: "I wholeheartedly congratulate you on this holiday. Id like to send New Year wishes, in particular, to those people who are facing difficulties now. Next year should be the year of assistance to them.

The president especially congratulated and wished Happy New Year to those who were not in Georgia by saying: "I wish [2014] to be the year of their return to their homeland.

"I want to congratulate our soldiers on this day. Thanks to their tireless and heroic work we sleep peacefully today.

"I want to congratulate our Abkhazian and Ossetian brothers. We should manage to overcome the pain of the past and build a new Georgia with a new vision.

Margvelashvili said 2013 had been extremely important for Georgian democracy.

"Last year, through a free and democratic process, we succeeded in consolidating democracy, began to close the post-Soviet era and started to build a modern, European state however the process of building a modern Georgia must be based on Georgian values and Georgian traditions, he said in a television appeal.

"There is no need to think about something new we just have to return to ourselves. Georgian people are oriented to freedom. Georgian culture is a culture of diversity and tolerance. Georgian people are individualists by nature, but at the same time, our slogan is Strength is in Unity.

Based on these very values, with new inspiration we should form a new and modern European Georgia, he said.

"With this tireless work [and] devotion to those values, which connect us to the past and establish bridges to the future, we should make a modern Georgian state the one of which our ancestors dreamed.

"I wish you all happiness, health, long-life and prosperity. I call on you to stand together in this process of building a new state, the president said.