Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said earlier that all ethnic groups that left the country can return to Georgia, but the list of those groups does not mention the Meskhetian Turks.
Meskhetian Turks are the former Muslim inhabitants of Meskheti (Georgia), along the border with Turkey. They were deported to Central Asia in 1944 by Josef Stalin and settled in Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Today, they reside in a number of other countries of the former Soviet Union.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Georgia failed to fulfill its obligation to the Council of Europe "to adopt a law on the repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks by the end of 2005," and that it "puts forward absurd demands that they acknowledge their ethnic Georgian origin."
The ministry also said Tbilisi does not conceal its intention to settle the Meskhetian Turks not in their historic homeland, but in some other Georgian region.
