President Saakashvili said on November 19 he planned to set up a new agency within his administration to coordinate international transport and energy projects in which Georgia is involved.

He said that Kote Kemularia, the former secretary of the Georgian National Security Council, would be the head of the agency. Alexander Lomaia, the education minister, will replace Kemularia, as part of a recent cabinet reshuffle.

“I decided to create a new unit within the president’s administration for energy and transportation projects and I asked Kote Kemularia to be in charge of this agency. [This is] a person that has huge influence and huge experience and he is a great state official and my long time companion,” Saakashvili said.

Speaking at a meeting with Georgian academics and scientists, which took place in the National Museum, Saakashvili pointed out that international transport projects, in particular, the planned Baku-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway line, were of “tremendous importance.”

He said that the construction of the regional railway project linking Azerbaijan with Turkey via Georgia was due to start in two days.

“It is really the project of the century. There were a lot of important projects, for example the oil pipeline project [Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan] but many people can not sense the pipeline's importance as they have no direct contact with it, except for those who are directly employed there. But with this railway, Georgia will be linked with the European railway network. Georgia is not a dead-end anymore; we can sit on a train in Tbilisi and go to Paris or Lisbon, because the railway goes under the Bosporus and in the future, I hope, that there will be express trains coming from Turkey to Georgia. This means that Georgia is making a geographical revolution, we are connecting to this [European railway] network,” Saakashvili said.

He also said that Georgia had “a shorter way to Europe that goes via Russia.” “I’m sure that this way will be available soon, when the Abkhazian problem is resolved and Georgia becomes united,” Saakashvili added.