Temur Alasania, uncle of Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili, said he plans a lawsuit against Georgia’s PM Irakli Garibashvili for calling him “KGB colonel.”

Speaking from New York with Rustavi 2 TV’s political talk show on Friday, Alasania, a former longtime UN official working, among others, with disarmament commission, said he plans to file a lawsuit in courts both in New York and Tbilisi to “restore my good name” and to demand “a public apology” from PM Garibashvili.

When last week PM Garibashvili said that it’s a “huge mistake” of Ukraine’s interim authorities to have such an “advisor” like Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili, the PM also mentioned Temur Alasania and said: “As I’ve seen Saakashvili is not alone there, as I was told he brought there his uncle [Temur Alasania] with him, who by the way has an interesting past in terms of his ties with the Russian security services, as I know he is a former KGB colonel – but as you know there is no such thing as a ‘former’ in that field.”

Temur Alasania told Rustavi 2 TV that there is a campaign ongoing in some Georgian media outlets to “taint my reputation”; he said that he has been ignoring it, but he cannot ignore when such a high-profile political figure like the Georgian PM levels such allegation.

He said that he is a private person and contrary to widespread speculations of wielding strong influence over Saakashvili’s political life, including when he was the President, he had “never given advices” to his nephew, when the latter served as the president. “By the way he had never asked for my advice,” said Temur Alasania, who also denied allegations of being involved in illicit arms trade as “absurd”.