President Saakashvili said that Georgia’s special services have information about the presence of a network of spies operating in the country’s governmental structures and said that he guarantees the security of those people who begin cooperating with the Georgian special services before May 1, 2006.

Speaking with reporters before his departure to Croatia, President Saakashvili was commenting about the detention of Simon Kiladze, an employee of the President’s Administration information department, who is suspected of passing secret information to the special services of an unnamed foreign country.

President Saakashvili said that the Georgian counter-intelligence service has “firm evidence proving that this person was engaged in activities directed against Georgia.”

“Since Georgia’s independence no one has been arrested in the governmental structures on these [spy] charges. This period is now over. I am afraid this is not the only person in the governmental structure who is engaged in this kind of activity. These people should know one thing: they are working against their own country and against the future of our country. But the good news is that there are many patriots in the Georgian special services who are actively engaged in dealing with these kinds of cases,” Saakashvili said.

“We have too much information which we have been gathering for a long time. We have information on many people. I want to tell these people that we will give them one month - before May 1 - so that these people who are currently working against their own country can appear at our counter-intelligence service and, if the cooperate with us, I give my personal guarantee to them that they will be absolutely untouchable regardless of what they have done until now… These people should know that we have a lot of information but we want them to cooperate with their own country based on our country’s interests. In this case no threat is posed to them. But the period when absolute freedom was given to these kinds of activities [espionage] in Georgia is now over… Georgia has very efficient law enforcement agencies and good counter-intelligence and I want to tell these people to use this chance and start cooperation with the Georgian law enforcement agencies,” the Georgian President stated.